Mo Amer’s “Mo” on Netflix is more than just a great comedy series
By Ray Hanania
The Netflix series “Mo,” starring Arab American comedian Mo Amer is not only one of the best comedy series streaming on cable, but it is a deep dive into the tragic reality of what Palestinians face not just in America, but under Israeli occupation.
I have watched the series five times, more than the number of times I have watched another streaming comedy favorite, Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
The two seasons of “Mo” are phenomenal, broadcast in 2022 and again in 2025 almost two years after it was approved by Netflix in January 2023.
With eight episodes each season, the series has you not only laughing along with Mo’s unusual Arab American and Muslim life, but it also has you understanding what Arabs and Muslims go through in a way that is acceptable to most Americans who don’t want to be beat over their heads being confronted by the racism that exists.
Racism against Arabs and Muslims does exist in America, but comedy helps portray it in the most acceptable means.
When I did Comedy for Peace and the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour, our motto was “If we can laugh together, we can live together.” Audiences loved both stand-up comedy performance series that I launched in 2004 and 2007.
The humor, often self-deprecating, not only opened the minds of audiences that have been pilloried by decades of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda, but helped them to understand a more balanced view of the Middle East conflict.
The pro-Israel fanatics who support Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist government in Israel were always upset by the effectiveness of the approach but they could do little. The real challenge was in the community, But almost two decades later, attitudes have changed.
Mo Amer’s comedy series, “Mo,” came just in time.
Although Netflix didn’t approve a 3rd season — they should have — the two seasons are very impactful in generating belly laughs at “Mo Najjar’s” fumbling through American life.
But my all-time favorite episode is the final episode of Season 2, which I am sure may have played a part in Netflix not renewing the series. Although maybe because Netflix decided not to renew the series for a 3rd season, that possibly motivated the powerful final episode theme.
Episode 8 of Season 2 takes the audience into the brutal, hate-driven world of the Israeli settlers when Mo returns to Palestine to visit his father’s brother’s family.
Every scene is authentic to the reality, and that had to be brutally painful to the extremists who defend Netanyahu’s genocidal government, especially today, nearly two years after the violence that began on Oct. 7, 2023 against Israelis in Gaza and the rampant mass revenge murders committed every day since by Israel’s military.
The Gaza conflict is probably why the second season of Mo was approved in January 2023 but not released until January 2025.
Every Palestinian who has ever returned to Palestine through Israel’s prejudicial security system that discriminates against non-Jews can identify with the experiences portrayed by Mo Amer in his series.
The ugly checkpoints. The racism portrayed in the series episode from Israeli border guards and airport security and settlers with machine guns and axes trying to chop down olive trees is mild compared to the reality, but powerful.
Many times, going through security, the Israelis hassled and grilled me intensely with questions. They would ask the same questions. “What’s your father’s name?” I would answer “George.” They’d then ask, “What’s your grandfather’s name. I would respond, “John.” And they would persist, “What is your great-grandfather’s name?” I respond, “Mousa,” promoting them to almost yell, “Aha!” I could have said “Moses,” but I knew where they were headed.
They took my camera and told me to take a picture of the border security ceiling. As I did so, they walked behind armor-plated walls, expecting my camera to explode.
Several times, airport and border security made me strip down, the bastards. But they were flustered when they discovered not only was I Palestinian, but also an American journalist who never hesitated later to share the disrespectful and racist manner in which I was harassed.
They returned my newspaper identification card for the Chicago Sun-Times, where I later published a four-part series in 1990 on my return to my father’s home in Jerusalem (taken by the Israelis), my mother’s home in Bethlehem, (surrounded by armed Israelis security), and my cousins in Ramallah, (who showed me the many injuries they suffered from the so-called “rubber bullets” fired into crowds).
“Mo” brought it all out for me. And even though the series profiles a Palestinian Muslim, and I am Palestinian, there is no difference between how Israelis treat all non-Jews, Muslim or Christian.
THANK YOU Mo Amer for having the courage to put those ugly themes and incidents into this comedy series. The combination of humor and racist hatred is powerful and makes non-Arab and non-Jewish audiences understand fully the truth of what has been happening since 1948.
I urge everyone to watch and enjoy the series on Netflix.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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