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How "Hotel Corona" Brought Israelis and Palestinians Together
(NPR) Daniel Estrin and Gregory Warner - The guests at the Dan Jerusalem Hotel from mid-March through early May included Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Arab residents of Jerusalem - all Covid-19 patients in quarantine, forced to live together until they were no longer infectious. They called it the "Hotel Corona." The life the patients created together - shared widely on social media - became the envy of the rest of Israel: sunbathing, yoga classes, Zumba sessions, singalongs by the grand piano, and room parties. Outside the hotel, everyone else was under lockdown at home. Aysha Abu Shhab, 19, who is Muslim, noticed everyone was sticking with their own kind at dinner. She wanted to branch out. So she sat down with a Jewish couple, Amram Maman, 66, and his wife Gina. "They were laughing all the time, so I chose them," she said. By the end of the meal, they were singing "Inta Omri" ("You Are My Life"), a popular Egyptian song from the 1960s. Noam Shuster-Eliassi, a comedian, performed stand-up for an audience of Jews and Arabs. She told her jokes in Hebrew and Arabic, surprising the audience. As the days went by, Shuster-Eliassi noticed the Arab and Jewish guests began intermingling more. "I was like, wait, where is the racism? Where's all the problems? Where's all the prejudice? Everybody's getting along here in this hotel."