Is laughter illegal under occupation?

Many performers booked at the Palestine Comedy Festival detained & deported by Israel

Is laughter illegal in occupied Palestine? Does performing standup make you an outlaw? Can people not for one moment take a breath and enjoy something? Of course not. That’s a part of what it means to be occupied and born into exile.

The 1001 Laughs Palestine Comedy Festival is an annual event cofounded and directed by Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr. We had Amer on The Palestine Pod in 2021, the episode is called “Akhaduha Mafroosheh with Comedian Amer Zahr.” You can follow him here on Instagram. The festival is currently ongoing from August 10th - 15th with shows in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, and occupied East Jerusalem.

The lineup for the Palestine Comedy Festival this year featured comedians Ahmed Al-Kadri, Bilal Sharmoug, Dana Alexander, Lana Salah, Maram Jafar, Nina Kharoufeh, and Noha Jadallah.

A few of the comedians (full disclosure - some are my friends) shared testimony of their mistreatment and abuse by the Israeli military from the moment they touched down in occupied Palestine.

Palestinian-American comedian Bilal Sharmoug shared his account on a highlight called “denied entry.” The only paperwork he and others were given as justification for their illegal detainment and deportation was that they were denied on the basis of “public security or public safety or public order considerations.” It appears the Israeli occupation can’t decide between the three so it hit them with the trifecta of bullshit.

Yemeni-American comedian Ahmed Al-Kadri detailed in a four part series the course of events surrounding his illegitimate detainment and deportation on Instagram. He’s not deterred and he plans to try again in the near future.

Lana Salah, Nina Kharoufeh, and Bilal Sharmoug are Palestinian-American comedians born into exile because european Jewish zionist terrorists displaced their ancestors. They were eager to go back to Palestine and perform for the indigenous people of the land. The people of Palestine were also eager to receive them. To share and connect, to laugh and heal. But of course the zionist occupation couldn’t allow for even a moment of relief without disruption.

To my knowledge only a fraction of the comedians slated to perform were not illegally detained and deported upon entry into occupied Palestine. These include Noha Jadallah, according to her Instagram video, Maram Jafar, and Dana Alexander based on recent stories they posted.

The comedy festival is still going forward with a mix of people performing in person and many who call in via Zoom. Because even as comedians born into exile Palestinians are forced to innovate and adapt under artificial unnecessary pressure in order to simply exist.

I am reminded of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Zakaria Zubeidi, one of the leaders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and one of the six political prisoners who miraculously escaped Gilboa death camp with only a spoon originally wanted to pursue theatre. The Israeli occupation made his participation in the resistance a fait accompli when “in 2002, during the Second Intifada, Zakaria's mother Samira and brother Taha were killed by Israeli snipers, and their family home, along with The Stone Theatre and much of the (Jenin Refugee) camp was bulldozed.”

I dream of a day where Palestinians can pursue theatre and comedy without interference because they’ve shaken off the Jewish supremacist occupation chains that shackle every aspect of their lives. One aspect of occupation is try to break the spirit of the native according to Fanon: “In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values. In the period of decolonization, the colonized masses mock at these very values, insult them, and vomit them up.”

People on twitter often talk about how the role of the artist is overstated but this shows that the fragile Israeli occupation fears being mocked. It fears jokes at its expense. Its image is so weak and its ego so fragile it can be shaken to its core by humor. I’m old enough to remember when Jews could take a joke. I lost my Instagram after one of my bits about an Israeli soldier being eaten by a shark went viral. They really hate to be embarrassed. Just the other day they disappeared the YouTube account of long standing movement comedian Tadhg Hickey. If you do standup and you oppose genocide the walls are closing in.

Palestinian poet, activist and author Mohammed El-Kurd talks about the use of humor as a tool against colonialism in his book Perfect Victims. “Humor is a powerful rejection of genocide because the joker is mocking the racism that calls on him to “prove” his humanity.” One of the most prolific and profound Palestinian thinkers of all time Ghassan Kanafani, never fired a bullet himself but through his writing he inspired the minds of those on the front lines fighting against imperialism with guns and other appropriate weapons.

If performing standup is reason enough to kidnap someone, hold them in interrogation for hours, and then deport them then it speaks to the power of the artist. If the artist is a threat to “public safety” or “public order” then surely it's a worthy adversary to occupation. According to Ismatu Gwendolyn our role as artists is to help build a better world by helping people to imagine something greater than what we’ve been conditioned to accept.

I think about the Kurt Vonnegut quote a lot: “During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

The zionist entity is crumbling, it’s lashing out violently, attempting to gobble up land, and exert political pressure. But fundamentally they’ve lost in the court of public opinion. They are mocked across the globe and they hate it. Their hasbara is ineffective despite spending more and more money on it. They are derided, they are treated as a pariah along their usual tourist destinations. This is the result of regular people having even the slightest interaction with Israelis directly and the bravery of the Palestinian resistance, Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah who exposed the Jewish supremacist rapists for the cowards they are.

Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands once said “our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” As comedians, actors, cartoonists, and clowns, our role in support of Palestinian liberation is to keep the laser pointed at the illegitimate Jewish supremacist zionist colony so that one day inshallah in the near future we can laugh about it once it has fallen forever.