Word: waraday
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...Welcome to the "Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour." Organized by Hanania and American-Israeli comedian Charlie Waraday, the January tour took three Jewish and one Arab stand-up comedians to Tel Aviv and three Jerusalem venues, one of them a synagogue. They never made it into the Palestinian territories; two of the comics hold Israeli passports and are banned from travel there. The tour's aim, says Hanania, was to show that "If we can laugh together, we can live together...
...comics are a sight gag in themselves. Waraday's meek demeanor is spiced up with wacky neckties. Aaron Freeman is an African-American Jewish convert who looks as though he just swung off the movie set of Pirates of the Caribbean. The third comedian is Yisrael Campbell, a former Irish-Italian Catholic who became an orthodox Jew. Campbell appears on stage much as he dresses every day around the Holy City - wearing a long black coat, a hat and a Moses-like beard. Black-suited Hanania has the broad-shoulders of a grizzled street tough, either in Chicago or Gaza...
...Humor has an edge in the Holy Land. It helps Palestinians and Israelis confront their worst fears. "In Israel, laughter is a necessity, a survival thing," says Waraday. Shortly after a suicide bombing in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, Waraday got an email from a woman who wanted to see the comedy tour. "She said, 'I live in Eilat, and I really need a laugh.' And I thought: 'Wow! That's what it?s all about...
...Sitting in the Ottoman-style grandeur of the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem before a show, Hanania and Waraday trade politically incorrect jokes about the belief, popular among suicide bombers, that 72 virgins await the martyr in paradise. "And what do the women get?" muses Waraday, recalling that a 57-year old Palestinian grandmother recently blew herself up. "What would they possibly have told this woman - that she'll have 72 kids who'll call every day and visit once in awhile? I know my Mom would blow herself up for that...