Max Brooks (and my) plea for No Hate

Our short video

Last week my longtime friend Max Brooks—who you may know from his best-selling books World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, and more—asked if I wanted to join him in making a short comedic video to combat the hate we’ve seen spike in the United States during the war in the Middle East. I, of course. said yes. 

Here is the short video:

If you – like others have noted- think Max and I look similar, well there is good reason for that. We are both half Italian and half Semitic. In Max’s case, his semitic half is Jewish--from his father Mel Brooks--while my Semitic heritage comes from my late Palestinian father, Abdul. (And yes, Arabs and Jews are both Semites!) Max and I met years ago when he was a writer at Saturday Night Live and I worked on SNL’s production staff. Since then we have been friends and even created an online streaming show we produced for Comedy Central about 15 years ago called “The Watch List” featuring Middle Eastern American comedians. (At the time, it was first show ever broadcast by a major corporate media outlet featuring Middle Eastern American comedians.)

We also both believe something I wrote about earlier in the month. That is the philosophy of my late Palestinian father who would always tell me: “We can’t bring the Middle East conflict to the United States.” What my immigrant father meant was that the violence and anger of the region—especially in times of war--should not come to our soil. But tragically Jewish, Muslim and Arab American organizations have all reported an increase in hate directed against their respective community since the Oct 7 horrific terrorist attack by Hamas and Netanyahu’s military response which has been brutal for Palestinian children and civilians in general.

Unbeknownst to Max and I, not far from we were filmed our short video last weekend in Manhattan, the very type of hate we hoped would not happen was playing out.  Stuart Seldowitz, 64 and who had been a career State Department official, had been repeatedly taunting an Arab immigrant, Mohamed Hussein, who worked in food cart in his neighborhood.  Seldowitiz—as caught on video—yelled at Hussein hateful comments like, "You're a terrorist, you support terrorism," and worse such as: "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasn't enough."

After the videos of Seldowitiz’s repeated taunts of the Arab food cart workers went viral, he was arrested Wednesday by the NYPD and charged with various crimes including aggravated harassment, hate crime and stalking. But what came next—and is buried or even ignored in the articles about the story—is that people who lived in the area and heard about the incident, came out to show support for the Arab immigrants who work in the food cart.

As one of the food cart workers Bahaa Hassan told CBS News: "We have mostly Jewish customer in this building. [Two customers] made cake for us last night." Soon these neighbors set up a table next to the cart, encouraging people to sit down and eat together.  Stephanie Merabet, a lawyer and one of those living in the area explained to CBS about the Arab immigrants who work In the food cart, "They're really wonderful people and they care about the community that they're in, and they certainly don't deserve this."

From the darkness of a hate filled rant came people standing in solidarity against hate. It’s also a vital reminder that we can’t allow ourselves to define any minority group by the most extreme examples.

Many of us might not agree on what we want US policy to be in the Middle East. But what we must agree on is that there is no place for hate when it comes to this emotionally charged conflict.  As Max and I said in the video, “hate is unAmerican.”

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