<div><p>"I am actually really proud that my best friend in the whole world is Jewish," Palestinian-Canadian Eman Husseini told a captivated audience at a stand-up comedy festival in Amman, only the second of its kind in the Middle East.</p><p>"We grew up together. It was very cute, instead of playing cowboys and Indians, it was Israelis and Palestinians.</p><p>"She would come over and kick me out of my house."</p><p>Bringing humour to a part of the world better known for political tension and conservative social and religious mores is the "mission" of Husseini and other young Arab comedians of hyphenated background -- be it American, Canadian, European.</p><p>And they don't shy away from conflict or stereotypes. Instead, they tweak them for laughs.</p><p>"What we know as stand-up comedy -- standing on a stage and telling jokes -- is a new phenomenon in the Arab world," said Dean Obeidallah, a Palestinian-American-Italian.</p><p>"There are no full-time stand-up comedy clubs in the Arab world. They haven't heard jokes about their own culture like this before -- no one's held a mirror up to them."</p><p>Obeidallah is part of a group that, provocatively, co-opted the Bush presidency's name for so-called rogue states intent on creating trouble, the Axis of Evil.</p><p>In 2003 -- two years after the September 11 terror attacks when many Arab-American comedians struggled to dispel suspicion and outright racism -- he and Palestinian-American comedian Maysoon Zayid co-founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. The aim was to showcase Arab talent, an antidote to post-9/11 fallout that proved a hit and has been held every year since.</p><p>Last December they took the idea to Jordan for what organisers and Amman city officials said was the first event of its kind in the Middle East.</p><p>A success, it returned this December with the blessing of Mayor Omar Maani, who said "it paves the way for talented youth with aspirations to become stand-up comedians ... to make their dream a reality."</p><p>Amman city officials said they hope to make it an annual event.</p><p>"We're comedy missionaries," said Obeidallah, who wants to organise workshops to help Arab youths break into the trade.</p><p>"In a way it's like globalisation through comedy. We are bringing the world together one laugh at a time."</p><p>Some two dozen comics performed here this year, including Obeidallah's Axis of Evil cohort Aron Kader.</p><p>"I am a Palestinian from the US, but being a Palestinian in the US is politically incorrect," he joked to the crowd in this desert kingdom where a majority of the six million residents are Palestinian.</p><p>"Because when somebody asks you what you are and you say you are Palestinian, they just kind of look at you... 'Oh, Palestinian?' No follow up question."</p><p>New Jersey-born Zayid, the first woman stand-up comedian to perform in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, spared no topic in Amman -- poking fun at Arab and Muslim society, her family and even her own disability, cerebral palsy.</p><p>"What's up, Amman? My name is Maysoon Zayid and I'm a Palestinian fallaha (peasant), born and raised in Amreeka (America)," she told cheering fans.</p><p>"My father is very conservative... I am the daughter of hajj (Muslim pilgrim) Musa Zayid. My mum looks like (Lebanese singer and sex symbol) Haifa Wehbe and my dad looks like Saddam Hussein," she told the audience.</p><p>"It's time for me to find a husband ... and where better than Gaza because they've got no place to run?"</p><p>The 33-year-old, who delivers her routine sitting on a stool, is unfazed by her disability.</p><p>"But I see a couple of you looking at me, like 'what's going on with her? I think maybe she is drunk'," the 33-year-old said of the body spasms caused by her condition.</p><p>"I do wanna assure you that I am not drunk because that would be haram," or forbidden under Islam.</p><p>"I have something called cerebral palsy, which means I shake all the time, like I am a little bit Shakira, Shakira, and I am also a little bit Yasser Arafat," she said, triggering peals of laughter as she compared herself to the gyrating Colombian pop singer and the late Palestinian leader whose hands used to tremble.</p><p>Zayid, who regularly visits the Israeli-occupied West Bank where she runs a charity for disabled and wounded refugee children, has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Her 2006 one-woman show, "Little American Whore", was chosen last year by the prestigious Sundance Institute for its Middle Eastern Screenwriters Lab, a workshop to support emerging filmmakers.</p><p>And she and Obeidallah kick off a new tour in the US and the Gulf States in January called "Arabs Gone Wild".</p><p>"My reception in the Arab world is even better than my reception outside the Arab world," she said. And her father "is very proud of the fact that I give a strong voice to the Palestinians, who are otherwise unheard."</p><p>A few home-grown comedians also performed in Amman, including Jordanian Nabil Sawalha.</p><p>"Stand-up comedy is new in the Arab world," he conceded, "but Arabs definitely know how to laugh and joke. They have always laughed at themselves and their problems."</p><p>Jordanian cartoonist Imad Hajjaj agreed.</p><p>"Arabs in the region are still not used to the idea of stand-up comedy," he said. "But comedy has always been part of our culture, although some people do not know sometimes how to get the laughs out."</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=65958382&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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