New Palestinian and Israeli comedians join punchlines on stage

by Ray Hanania (Palestine/USA)

We had our first show of our tour Friday night — a tough night in Jerusalem because of Shabbat issues — but we had a nice crowd. But more importantly, we had five new comedians, Israelis and Palestinian, sign up to perform for our “Open Mike Night.” This time, I wanted the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour to not only perform comedy and entertain the audiences, as we did in the last two previous tours, but I wanted to open the door to other Israelis and Palestinians to join us.

It was a long but fun night. I gave every new comedian who signed up as long as they wanted to perform — up to 15 minutes, and that’s a lot for five new comedians in addition to the two regulars, myself and Israeli Charley Warady (Yisrael was off for Shabbat) and a new performer who joined us this tour, Egyptian Sherif Hedayat (www.FunnySherif.com). Sherif served as the evening’s emcee.

The first comedian was Fadi, a Palestinian from Jerusalem. It was th every first time that he ever did comedy. It was amazing. He had great jokes. A great experience for him to learn about delivering comedy on the stage in front of an audience. Now, I don’t know about you, but standing up in front of an audience is terrifying — I’ve been doing it 30 years (as a speaker, journalist and the last six as a standup comedian too). It’s tough to do, but he did it. It was great and he was very funny. MC Deuce, an Israeli who often performs in Tel Aviv, also joined the show this tour. MC Deuce served as our emcee during our very first show in Tel Aviv at Tzavta. And we had several more. Benji and Luke also got up and, inspired by the comedians, a fifth comic, a journalist, Gil Yaron, got up and performed some comedy, too.

We then turned it over to Sherif, who lampooned the hassles he had when he was detained at Ben Gurion Airport by the Israelis. Here’s the link to his column. And then Charley and then me. Charley and I both added new material ont he real comedy show so far, the Annapolis Peace Conference.

Israeli-Palestinian Comedy, “It’s a blast!” (In a good way).

Ray Hanania
from the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem