In America, it's Jews not Arabs who, in Noel Coward's phrase, have a talent to amuse. Right? There have always been a few Gentiles thrown in for balance -- think Bob Hope -- but the comic greats, from Mrs. Marx's boys on down through Jack Benny and beyond, seem to have been mainly Jewish.

The stand-up comic Jackie Mason, who is Jewish regardless of his Waspish English surname, just created a flap by objecting to the inclusion of an Arab-American performer in his show at Zanies Comedy Club, a famous Chicago night spot. Management responded by pulling Ray Hanania, the comedian to open the bill starring Mason. Hanania, a Vietnam war veteran and Chicago Sun-Times journalist before he turned to making jokes for a living, is said to be of Palestinian extraction.

"It's not exactly like he's just an Arab-American," Mason's spokeswoman Jyll Rosenfeld was quoted as saying afterward. "This Guy's a Palestinian. We were not told about it ahead of time. Jackie does not feel comfortable having a Palestinian open for him. Right now, it's a very sensitive thing. It's just not a good idea."

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, when the death-dealing hijackers were all Arab, and of the loose talk of jihad, not to mention the debate over what to do about Iraq and how reliable is Saudi Arabia as a US ally, many Americans would probably shrug or even condone Mason's action and not consider it an act of bigotry.

UN delegates, of whatever cultural or religious background, generally shy away from US domestic incidents like this one. But since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the Palestinian suicide bombings there probably have been numerous incidents of unpleasantness involving Arab diplomats, even if they were too minor to cause a fuss to be made at the time. The row over diplomats and consular officials who ignored New York City's parking restrictions and in the process were estimated recently to have racked up $20 million worth of unpaid tickets could not avoid an ethnic overtone. When former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani ordered a crackdown on his watch (Michael Bloomberg was doing nothing original in taking out also after the diplomatic scofflaws) it transpired that Egypt and Saudi Arabia were among the prime alleged culprits.

Hanania, who works in public relations when he's not tickling funny bones, has gotten a fair amount of mileage out of the Jackie Mason incident, much of it sympathetic to him. On the public radio station WNYC in New York Friday, the word bigot was used by a talk show host -- referring to Mason. Hanania, by the way, was identified as having Lebanese background and said to be Christian and married to a Jew.

Considering the cause of the nightclub incident, his Web site (www.hanania.com) does give pause if one were to take it seriously. It's titled "Arab-American Media Oasis," the words flanked by images of US and Palestinian flags, and it's there that Seinfeld's antecedents are mentioned. "Hanania's primary role model in comedy is the popular Arab stand-up comic Jerry Seinfeld," visitors to the site are informed.

It reports that Seinfeld's family immigrated from Syria and that his mother is Jewish (which would make him Jewish, too). "That makes him half Arab," Hanania notes, adding, "What a mensch he is!"

Hanania makes this personal statement on his Web site. "I don't want any more Palestinian 'martyrs.' I want role models who have the courage to stand up and say what needs to be said, to tell our people the truth, to do the right thing and to be remembered for principled stands rather than hypocrisy."

There's also an ad for his collection of essays published in the book "I'm Glad I Look Like a Terrorist: Growing up Arab in America." Actually, judging from several portraits of him on display, Hanania with his black mustache looks like any number of Arabs or Latin Americans around the UN, where he might get hardly a second glance, let alone be suspected of political mischief. Perhaps Jackie Mason has led a cloistered life.