HKS<\/a> \u201910, a comedian, activist, and all-purpose funnyman, who spearheaded the event. \u201cBecause it is the home of the three major religions in the world \u2026 they all focus on the spiritual principles of love, justice, peace, forgiveness, compassion, loving one another.\u201d<\/p>\nA funny thing happened on the way to the forum \u2014 and yes, the comedians could not pass up that obvious one-liner \u2014 and that was how people of different religious backgrounds could laugh together.<\/p>\n
Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian-American comedian, brought down the house with fearless zingers in unsettling territory about her upbringing, her cerebral palsy, her virginity, and her foil of a fianc\u00e9.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am THE most oppressed person in the entire world. I am female. I am Muslim. I\u2019m a virgin. I\u2019m an Arab, and I live in New Jersey,\u201d Zayid quipped.<\/p>\n
At age 33 \u2014 the equivalent, she said, of age 67 in the Arab world \u2014 she got engaged. \u201cThis is how I did it. I went to the perfect place to find a guy. I went to Gaza,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know why? \u2019Cause they got no place to run!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jewish-American comedian Scott Blakeman talked about bringing together two enemy camps, Yankee and Red Sox fans. He needled former Attorney General Michael Mukasey for his position on torture, saying that while it was nice to see an observant Jew as attorney general, \u201cWhy can\u2019t you observe the Sabbath AND the Geneva Convention?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the wake of health care reform, he suggested putting health insurance companies to work in the Defense Department: \u201c \u2018I\u2019d like to bomb that country.\u2019 \u2018Sorry, not covered.\u2019 \u2018How about sending more troops in Afghanistan?\u2019 \u2018Nope. Pre-existing war.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
The evening took a more serious turn in the second half with a panel discussion, moderated by Marshall Ganz, Harvard lecturer in public policy.<\/p>\n
Wassim Khazmo, a Palestinian from Jerusalem and a Kennedy School public administration midcareer student, described growing up during the Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of the late 1980s, \u201cwhen all I wanted to do was play football,\u201d and how Israeli authorities cracked down violently on a Palestinian rally welcoming South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, a memory he carried \u201calong with me through the years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barak Loozon, an Israeli Wexner fellow at the Kennedy School, told of being brought up by a father who said, \u201cNever trust an Arab,\u201d of serving in the Israeli army, and of the psychological trauma his sister experienced when she survived a suicide bombing of a pub that seriously injured her boyfriend.<\/p>\n
Yet both men indicated they would work toward a resolution of Middle East violence, though both were somber about the difficulties faced. \u201cBarak and I can talk logically, but we have our differences,\u201d Khazmo said. Loozon said, \u201cHope is not enough. There is a lot to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, pressed for details on what a Middle East peace would look like, both men were hesitant. Khazmo emphasized that Palestinians needed justice; Loozon said a third party was needed to mediate.<\/p>\n
Ganz, however, struck a more optimistic note by characterizing the event as a \u201csuccess before it even began\u201d by the sheer fact of bringing different parties together. The forum was, he acknowledged, an \u201cunlikely event. But it\u2019s often to the unlikely we turn when we\u2019re stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did you hear the one about the Jew and the Palestinian at Harvard? It seems that making jokes about deadly serious situations underscores how laughter crosses ethnic and cultural boundaries. OK, so it\u2019s not exactly ushering in world peace. But it\u2019s a start, and that was enough for the organizers of \u201cIsrael & Palestine: Embracing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}