You may have heard about President Barack Obama’s historical speech last week in Cairo. Quoting the Quran three times and acknowledging his personal ties to Islam, Obama called on the Muslim world to embrace common principles of justice, progress and tolerance to move beyond “the cycle of suspicion and discord” between the U.S., Israel and Arab nations. Both the West and the Muslim world are hopeful that these words mark a true change and that peace is within reach.

With the above in mind, it is our pleasure to introduce you to Ahmed & Salim: two very popular cartoon characters in Israel who have been gaining in popularity outside of the Holy Land very quickly.

Ahmed, Salim and their father Yasser are Palestinian terrorists who aren’t particularly succesful at their ‘job’. The first episode of this Middle Eastern version of Southpark was watched over 650.000 times on Youtube. As expected, Arabs are far from happy with this ‘racist’ stereotyping of Palestinians. Even in Israel there has been some criticism, especially regarding one episode in which father Yasser wakes up as an orthodox Jew and gets shot in the nuts by one of his sons. The creators of the show, Israelis Tom Trager and Or Paz, claim they don’t hate Arabs, just mankind in general.

We can’t think of a better introduction. Enjoy!