In this stand-up, comedian Sammy Obeid humorously addresses the lack of global awareness about Palestinians, using famous figures like Jesus and DJ Khaled to highlight the region’s historical and contemporary complexities. He explores the serious issues of identity, conflict, and suffering in Palestine, labeling the situation as genocide and advocating for peaceful resolutions and understanding. Obeid reflects on the challenges of discussing such sensitive topics through comedy, emphasizing the importance of unity and recognizing the resilience of the Palestinian people amidst ongoing strife and division.
Published on YouTube, November 12, 2023
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First of all, I think America doesn’t know a lot about Palestinian people, and that’s probably because America needs someone famous from a group to know about a race, right? And you think, like, who are famous Palestinians? Nobody really knows them. You have like Yasser Arafat and Jesus, and it’s like, who are those guys? I’ve never heard of them. Oh, and DJ Khaled. DJ Khaled is actually ours too, yeah. We’re giving him away though; you can have him. But, uh, isn’t that crazy though? The two most famous Palestinians in history are Jesus and DJ Khaled. They’re very similar when you think about it. Jesus and DJ Khaled. In fact, when they came out with the New Testament, they were like, “Another one!”
I know a lot of people do get upset with that joke because I say Jesus was Palestinian. A couple of things about this, okay: First of all, the name uh, Palestine, traces back to a root that goes before Jesus’s time. In fact, Syria Palestina was what the Romans and Greeks called the broader area, so it was a term that existed. But Jesus specifically was born in Judea, and he was ethnically Jewish, but he was born in the land that is now Palestine because Bethlehem is in the West Bank of Palestine. So, if someone’s born here in America 2,000 years ago, we call them Native American. By the same logic, Jesus is native Palestinian. And yes, he’s Jewish. He was ethnically Jewish. Jesus was Jewish and Palestinian; he was the solution to the Middle East in one person.
Yeah, this isn’t a sermon, don’t worry. I’m just saying. I’m just saying. We know Jesus was Jewish because he didn’t celebrate the Christian holidays, right? He didn’t do Christmas. He really didn’t like Easter, definitely did not do Easter. Every Christmas Eve, he’d be at a Chinese restaurant, locally like, he was for sure Jewish. And we know Jesus was Palestinian ’cause he broke out of a cave in a matter of 3 days. That requires a tunnel. We know this. Jesus was Jewish and Palestinian, and black, for sure. He was black.
It is nice that America’s finally waking up and becoming aware of how serious this issue and how this issue affects all of us. Watching everything fall apart in the last few weeks has been extremely disheartening. I know I come off as like, you know, I know how to put on a game face for shows, but I’ve been really depressed. There are people right now who are suffering a deeply tragic situation. People are being killed right now, and we are not over there; we are here in the first world. So, I think it is important for us to remember that we should not be the ones adding fuel to the fire. We should be helping. We should be stopping this madness. That’s my opinion, okay?
Um, but the Palestinians are going through right now is, by definition, a genocide. You can get upset with that if you want, but a lot of people are like, “Oh, you’re changing the definition of genocide.” No, you didn’t know what the definition of genocide was. You have to look it up. It turns out there’s been a lot of genocides that you didn’t think about because that’s the definition of genocide. Here’s the positive part: The Palestinian people are strong. The Palestinian people are very, very strong. They’re the only ones who could be surviving this madness. You have good, innocent civilians fighting for their lives against the deprivation of basic human rights, like, we’re going to cut off their food, we’re going to cut off their water. It’s like, uh, have you heard of Ramadan? They’ve been training for this their whole lives. You’re messing with the wrong folks. This just brings them closer to God.
Can you imagine if the people who controlled America’s water and food cut off our water and food? We’d be storming the Capitol tomorrow. We’d be eating each other on day three; the vegans would go first. You’d have like 10 January 6 at the Capitol. We’d be eating Nancy Pelosi right in front of her. Can you imagine if people blacked out our internet? Gen Z’s head would explode the first day. There couldn’t even be a genocide; there would be a mass suicide before it even started.
So, people are suffering, and the least we can do is try and help and try to create an aura of peace. And this also means seeing through propaganda. There’s a lot of propaganda going on right now that’s trying to destroy the character of a lot of different people and divide us all. You have to understand there’s propaganda that’s making Arabs look bad; it’s a full-on smear campaign against Arabs and the same thing for Jewish people too, a shmear campaign.
Um, if you’re Arab, if you’re Muslim, if you’re Jewish, you need to know that we are being divided and we are being torn apart by fucking warlords right now. This is not us; this is not reflective of our people, of our histories. And um, you know, correct me if I’m wrong, plus or minus, but there’s about 7 million Jews in Israel, and there’s about 7 million Palestinians, could be plus or minus, could be about six to seven. Jewish people want a Jewish State, Palestinian people want a Palestinian State. There’s only a couple of ways it’s going to happen: there’s either going to be two states, there’s going to be one state where the land is shared, or there’s going to be a genocide. Be on the team of not choosing genocide. That’s all the basic premise is: don’t choose the genocide.
Mathematically, the land is to be shared, not taken. I wrote that myself when I was high. The land is to be shared, not… I wish we could just spread the whole world like a CBD Mist over the whole world at one time, but nobody would allow that. You couldn’t get that clearance through the government. You’d have to just a full-on Grassroots movement to just, and an indica too, no sativa. Fucking, we don’t need more anxiety in this world. Just spray the whole world down with an indica, get everybody in the couch, and then we can have a real conversation.
Trust me, I’ve been making bits about the situation for many, many years. It’s very hard to do it without being a complete downer and also without coming across as insensitive. I also choose my words very carefully, and you can never satisfy everybody, you know. People are always going to get offended by one thing you might say, and then there’s the other camp of people who are like, “You didn’t go hard enough.”
Somebody asked me, “Why don’t you make jokes about Israel?” I usually say Palestine because you can often get in trouble for criticizing Israel. That’s the other thing too; people aren’t pronouncing the names right. That’s a really annoying thing. I heard somebody call it Palestine, like this is in Ohio, bro, like. I heard somebody call it Gaza, like no, no, it’s Gaza, or if you’re Arab, say Gaza. Yeah, or Israeli, say Hamas. Hamas, even Israel too, Israel too. You have these Southern politicians like, “Israel, I stand with Israel,” like dude, if you stand with them, say it how they say it. They say it Israel or as Arabs call it, Palestine. Like, learn just learn the names, learn the names.
But my friend was like, “Why don’t you make jokes about the Israeli military? Are you scared?” I’m like, no, I’m an American, I pay taxes, I can make fun of anybody I support, right? The reason I don’t make fun of the Israeli military is that I’ve tried before, and it’s failed. I posted a joke about the Israeli military, and everybody hated it. Even Palestinians were like, “Take it down,” so I did. I listened to the people. I didn’t give up. I tried again. I posted another joke about the Israeli military, and people were like, “Don’t quit your day job,” which hurts ’cause I don’t have a day job, so I took it down. But I don’t, I never give up; that’s the perseverance of the Palestinians. I posted another one, people flagged it so much Instagram took it down, so yeah, I don’t do that ’cause when the people beg me to stop bombing, I stop. All right, just want to make sure I’m not bombing right now, right? I just want to make sure I’m not bombing or my jokes didn’t go up into the air and misfire. I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page here.
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