*** Welcome to piglix ***

Israeli–Palestinian Comedy Tour


Israeli–Palestinian Comedy Tour was founded in November 2006 by Palestinian comedian and columnist Ray Hanania and Israeli comedian and online Podcaster Charley Warady. Arab-American Palestinian comedian and award-winning journalist Ray Hanania and his companions from the Israeli–Palestinian Comedy Tour operate under the slogan: "If we can laugh together, we can live together".

Warady and Hanania grew up in the same Chicago neighborhood, Pill Hill/South Shore Valley in the 1960s. Warady discovered Hanania while exploring the internet for references to Pill Hill and found Hanania's online book "Midnight Flight: The Story of White Flight in Chicagoland" (2000, Online, www.hanania.com). When Warady contacted Hanania and identified himself as an Israeli comedian, Hanania challenged Warady to appear on the same comedy stage with a Palestinian comedian to challenge the animosity enveloping both their peoples. Warady and Hanania arranged the first-ever Palestinian-Israeli comedy tour in the world, with four shows in Israel and one show in East Jerusalem in January 2007. The shows were internationally acclaimed and the duo organized a second tour of Israel and the Palestinian territories in June 2007. The comedians are joined by Aaron Freeman, a veteran of Second City in Chicago and an African American convert to Judaism, and by Yisrael Campbell, a Hasidic Jewish convert from Catholicism.

Israeli–Palestinian Comedy Tour is the show of an American-Palestinian Ray Hanania and three Jewish comedians Charley Warady, Aaron Freeman and Yisrael Campbell, two of whom live in Israel.

The MidEastWeb Directory of Middle East Israel-Palestine Information Resources provides links to such shows. It says about "Israeli–Palestinian Comedy Tour": [it is] "To make you laugh. To make you think. To help end conflict in the middle east." It further describes "Stand Up For Peace" as "Scott Blakeman and Dean Obeidallah founded and produce Stand up For Peace, which presents Jewish and Arab-American comedians standing together for a non-violent, political solution to the Middle East crisis." "The American Muslim" journal ("TAM") mentions both shows as "general good news" "for Muslims in 2007"


...
Wikipedia

...