JUST WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, BUT DIDN'T YET. RAY HANANIA IS A KNOWN PROPAGANDIST HERE IN CHICAGO. HOW COULD THE MEDIA FALL FOR THIS? ALLTHE BEST. GAIL WINSTON
NYPost, Aug.30/02 http://www.nypost.com/seven/08302002/postopinion/opedcolumnists/46999.html
SOME people are feeling scandalized that big bad Jewish comic Jackie Mason fired a poor struggling comedian solely because of his Palestinian background. They've been had.
Mason did nothing wrong. The comic in question is no innocent victim. But this nonscandal scandal says something important about the way the race-and-ethnic card is played today.
Mason is appearing at a Chicago club called Zanies, honing material for his new Broadway show, "Much Ado About Everything." Club manager Linda Moses thought it would be amusing to book local opening acts on Mason's flip side.
Mason and his wife-manager, Jyll Rosenfeld, approved - but said they didn't want the openers to do political material, out of respect for Mason's core audience.
But the opener was to be Ray Hanania.
And therein hangs a tale. Hanania has been a stand-up comedian for all of nine months. He claims he began performing stand-up after 9/11 to bring people together. That's just about the only funny thing he says.
Hanania worked as a reporter for years before becoming a p.r. expert. He also writes a political column for the Daily Herald (a suburban Chicago paper), puts political observations on his Web site and is past president of the Palestinian American Congress.
In Hanania's opinion, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may be worse than Hitler and Stalin [see Murray's posting of Hanania's article in Lebanon's Daily Star, below]. Jews have bought control of the U.S. Congress. And President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are little more than paid agents of Israel.
Ha ha ho ha hee. Stop it, Hanania, you're killing me.
Some choice Hanania morsels:
* Sharon and Hitler "both share that same megalomania that set Hitler apart on a level of unparalleled cruelty."
* Rumsfeld "is subservien[t] to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, which may not occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in his view, but certainly does occupy the U.S. Congress. It now seems the Israeli lobby also controls Rumsfeld."
* "Bush will no longer hold impromptu press conferences. His staff says the president needs at least three days to translate the documents from Hebrew into English before he will read them to the press."
That last line is supposed to be a joke. With material like that, he'll knock 'em dead at the next David Duke convention.
The folks who run Zanies didn't know about Hanania's political writing. But some Jewish folk in the Chicago area went ballistic when they heard he'd appear with Jackie Mason.
The club was barraged with calls from potential audience members saying they'd boycott the gig and tell others to do so. Zanies even got violent threats by e-mail.
So the club decided that, in the interest of prudence, Hanania shouldn't open for Mason. It was the club's decision, not Mason's. Hanania was paid for his time, and his gig rescheduled. No big deal.
But then Hanania went to work. Claiming he was fired for "being Palestinian," he got himself on national TV and in newspapers across the country.
In fact, Hanania has got himself a promising comedy career exclusively because he is of Arab descent. His material is entirely of the "I got racially profiled at the airport" variety, with some detours into his marriage to a Jewish woman.
Here's Hanania's bit about that: "Three words about the wedding: Oy and vey."
With material like that, you need affirmative action and reverse racism to get you anywhere near a stage.
Hanania is after bigger fish than a mere comedy career. He wants to make repulsive views like his palatable by sugarcoating them. And he's using this non-event the same way. He's cast himself as the martyred Palestinian and Jackie Mason as Ariel Sharon.
On his Web site, Hanania offers this counsel to those who would speak for the Arab cause: "Identify the audience you need to speak to. When you do that, you then craft the message that most impacts that audience." He's proved his point by playing the American media for suckers.
========================= -----Original Message----- From: Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript. [mailto:Адрес электронной почты защищен от спам-ботов. Для просмотра адреса в вашем браузере должен быть включен Javascript.] On Behalf Of Murray Kahl Sent: August 29, 2002 10:01 AM To: Middle East discussion group & Zionist news releases Subject: An opinion by Ray Hanania (Re:Jackie Mason)
Daily Star, Lebanon, April 6, 2002
"Sharon will fail" By Ray Hanania
(Ray Hanania is a Palestinian-American author and writer based in Chicago, Illinois, USA)
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/06_04_02_h.htm
Nazi-like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes he is taking the Palestinian people to the brink of destruction, but he doesn't realize that the brink of disaster is not for the Palestinians, but Israel itself.
Sharon is single-handedly doing what the Arabs have failed to do themselves, forcing them to unite and to abandon their past policies of coddling Israel's intractable refusal to compromise.
In the past, the Palestinians and the Arabs have accepted Israel's near-maximum demands as pre-conditions to start negotiations. So, the discussions have always only focused on returning "most of" the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and setting aside the issue of returning "parts" of East Jerusalem until latter negotiation dates.
Yet during negotiations, Israel always cleverly backs out, stopping short of giving the Palestinians anything other than a future as a subjugated people. The dream of compromise with Israel is over, today, and it is clear to nearly everyone that Sharon has opened the door to the new possibility of correcting the original injustice of 1948 and restoring Palestinian control over all of Palestine, an action that the pro-Israel American apologists have dubbed as the "destruction" of the state of Israel.
This term has been exploited, abused and exaggerated as certainly as Israel's cadre of apologists and have exploited the term anti-Semitism to muddy-up anyone who has dared to speak out against Israel's cowardly brutalization of civilian targets.
The changes in the world are subtle, but significant. First, a recent Gallop Poll shows that while most Americans (80 percent) believe that the US must pressure the Palestinians to end the conflict, most Americans, more than 72 percent, also believe that they must pressure Israel, too.
Second, the truth of what is happening is getting out to the American public despite one of the most unprofessional blackouts imposed by the anti-Arab American media. The Palestinian and Arab viewpoint is making it to the American people.
Third, the lessons of the first intifada are not lost and we are seeing the results. No matter how hard Israel and its manipulators in the American media try to prevent the world from seeing the truth of Israel's viciousness, it comes out either on TV, the internet or in newspapers. The Israeli Army is guilty of Nazi-like war crimes, including executing in cold blood, Palestinian prisoners it has captured. Several of these executions have been captured on TV.
Fourth, the second intifada is working. The world can see the ridiculousness of Christiana Amanpour standing there asking Yasser Arafat, who is besieged in a bunker, if he will do something to stop the violence. More and more Americans have said they were appaled by her display of ignorance, and are now seeing the Palestinian cause as being the victim of Israel's state terrorism.
Finally, while President George W. Bush remains in a leadership stupor in the White House, incapable of doing anything, some view his inaction as the cause of the violence. That is true. His failure to lead has given Sharon the green light, dripping with red blood, to murder Palestinians at will.
But, the absence of Bush's leadership has one other positive impact. It has left the leaders of the Arab world subject to an intense pressures of their own people, billions of Muslims and Arabs around the world who are demanding that the Arab world and the Muslim world finally severe all ties to the regime of Ariel Sharon.
These are events we could never have hoped for. It proves that by standing up to Israel's brutality, and even in the face of losing so many innocent Palestinian lives either to Israeli Army murder or suicide bombings, the Palestinians will defeat Israel.
Now is not the time to surrender to Israel and accept compromise.
Now is the time to forge ahead and demand even more. Now is the time for all Arab governments to severe all ties with Israel, to isolate Israel again as was done years ago. To return Israel to the situation where it cannot be allowed to think that it can murder innocent Palestinian civilians and find territorial gains.
Israel's Nazi-like government must be shown that its policies of murder and executions and killings will carry a heavy price in future talks, and that all of Jerusalem is now on the table and that all of Palestine is on the table, too.
Why shouldn't Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes and lands stolen from them in 1948?
The Jewish people waited 2,000 years to get back what they asserted was theirs. The Palestinians can wait too. Why be in such a rush to give away our rights?
Time does not erase the crime.
And where once many Arabs were willing to compromise and give in to Israel's demands, much of that willingness is now gone forever.
Many Palestinians are chanting today: "Thank you Ariel Sharon for opening the door to our victory!"
In the face of Sharon's vicious campaign, many Palestinians can see victory!
Russian versia