On Friday night, The New Israel Fund hosted a shabbat dinner with Israeli-Arab journalist and writer Sayed Kashua.

A few months ago I went to a screening of Kashua’s television show Avoda Aravit or ’Arab Labor’ in English. It was an event hosted by The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan for their ‘Other Israel’ series. Other Israel meaning the often forgotten Israeli-Arabs, Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship and live within the 1948 borders. Sayed Kashua is one of these citizens and an outspoken one at that.

Sayed is known for his weekly columns in Ha’Artez newspaper, the popular leftist newspaper in Israel. I must admit, I have only read a few since I do not read or speak Hebrew, the language in which they are written, and have only found a few of the English translations online. But, from what I understand, he is the voice of the Israel-Arab situation. A citizen of Israel yet as a Muslim, a minority in a Jewish state and as an Arab, an often persecuted minority.

When I saw ‘Arab Labor’ I found it clever and funny. There were many times when I laughed out loud but true to my education in Womens Studies, I couldn’t help analyzing the story and characters. The story of an Israeli-Arab deperately wanting to fit in with the Jewish majority, squelching his Arabness in the process, at first reminded me of black shows that came out in America during the 80’s. After some thought though, I realized the analogy was inaccurate. While speaking with the man who sat across from me at the dinner, a better comparison was made. Kashua, with his self-depreciating humor and sarcasm, is a Jewish comedian not unlike Woody Allen.

In the same way that Woody Allen makes fun of Jews to poke fun at non-Jews for their prejudices, Sayed Kashua makes fun of Arabs to poke fun at Israeli-Jews for their misconceptions.  During the Q&A, Kashua put his humor into context. “It wasn’t necessarily ‘Jewish” humor’”, he said, but “minority humor.” What Sayed does in his articles, in his show, is an attempt to humanize the threatened minority, Israeli-Arabs, quite like how European and American Jews use humor to make themselves ’likeable’ to the Christian majorities of those nations.  

As Israeli Independence Day, or to the Palestinian and wider Arab community The Nakba (catastrophe), wraps up there are many in the media who have left behind a wake of articles and interviews discussing the state of Arabs living within the 1948 borders of Israel. With the separation wall growing everyday, cutting off those in the West Bank from their neighbors in the pre-1967 land, it will be up to the Jewish and Arab Israelis to continue their work in trying to sort out the situation, to try and understand each others narratives. Those on the outside of those walls are out of reach and increasingly being pushed out of the conversation.

The short film, WEST BANK STORY, may not solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue but it will make you laugh, which is more than most can say for Olmert and Abbas.

West Bank Story first came into the limelight when it walked away from the 2006 Academy Awards as the winner of “The Best Live Action Short Film.” Since that time, the film has seen success, including at a handful of Jewish Film Festivals. 

After watching West Bank Story it’s not difficult to understand why it has gained so much praise. Writers Ari Sandel, a native Californian with an Israeli father, and Kim Ray take a heavy subject and create a laugh-out-loud musical comedy.

West Bank Story takes place near a checkpoint in Palestine. A few feet away stands two falafel restaurants, side by side. One Palestinian-owned, the other Israeli. As fate would have it a customer had forgotten his hummus and Fatima, the counter girl from the Palestinian falafel stand, runs after him with the bag in hand only to be stopped at the checkpoint a few feet away by a less-than-calm Israeli soldier. Another soldier, David, puts an end to the harrassment, having fallen in love at first sight with the girl. What happens next is a parody of life within the current conflict.

Disagreements and misunderstandings escalate, walls are constructed, violent destruction ensues but in the end comes a creative resolution. Unlike the film, the reality of the situation offers no end, no humorous conclusion, which leaves you wishing the politicians could be as crafty as the restauranteurs. For us outside of the film, we will have to keep waiting for a finale, hopefully one as humorous as the film’s.

Watch clips of the film with commentary on AlJazeera’sThe Fabulous Picture Show.

Part commemoration, part celebration, Rachel Corrie’s book release gathering at Cooper Union’s Wollman Auditorium on Friday night was a testament to a wonderful person taken from this earth too soon.

Rachel’s collection of poems, LET ME STAND ALONE, recently published by Norton, meticulously selected with loving care by her family and passionate editor, reveal a girl, in her childhood writings, and woman, in her latter work, who had a striking awareness of the world.

Her writings reveal a person deeply concerned with other peoples’ right to dignity, peace and justice and an acute ability to acknowledge their suffering. Her childhood poems display an impressive wisdom that few people ever obtain regardless of age and an almost comical obsession with Moscow’s corroded water pipes.

Rachel not only exhibited compassion in her writing, she showed in with action. From her time working for a local nature conservancy, to the community hospital where she worked with the mentally handicapped to her final destination, Palestine.

In March 2003, Rachel Corrie was killed in Rafah, a village in the Gaza Strip as she attempted to stop a family’s home from demolition by the Israeli Defense Force. Standing on a mound of dirt, face to face with the driver of a Catepillar Bulldozer, Rachel was crushed as the machine continued to move foward.

SInce losing their daughter in a horrific and heartbreaking manner, Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy have taken up their daughter’s fight, having found, post humorously, a noble cause in the struggle for justice in Palestine.

Craig and CIndy, joined by notable friends such as actress Lily Taylor and Najla Said, the late Edward Said’s daughter and founding member of Nibrasan Arab-American theater company, took turns reading from Rachel’s poems.

This evening with the Corrie family and their friends was one of the most touching and emotional events I have ever attended.

For more information about Rachel Corrie and how you can carry on her fight, please visit The Rachel Corrie Foundation website.

For further reading about Gaza and The West Bank, I encourage you to read the works of Israeli Journalist Amira Hass, DRINKING THE SEA AT GAZA: Days and Nights in a Land Under Seige and REPORTING FROM RAMALLAH: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.