Israel, Humor, & ‘Democracy’
I read about Arab Work in the Chicago Tribune over a week ago and thought it was quite interesting …comedy almost always seems to have its effective way of bringing serious issues to light lightly…and so Sitcom turns lens on Israeli Arabs…
Arab Work is a sitcom about an Arab Israeli family who is struggling to trying to fit in Israeli Society…The main character is Amjad Alayan, an Arab Israeli journalist who is trying to desperately fit in his Jewish surroundings.
Sayed Kashua says, “This is a first: Arabs on prime-time commercial TV who are not terrorists,” he said. “I want to make people laugh, to let viewers connect with the characters instead of preaching about discrimination and occupation. The message has to be subtle, more subconscious than conscious, and it has to be padded with a lot of humor. Otherwise it won’t work.”
“The series was written by Sayed Kashua, 32, a popular Israeli Arab columnist and author who writes in Hebrew on the identity crisis of Arabs in the Jewish state. His first two novels were best sellers, translated into several languages. Satire is Kashua’s main tool in the sitcom, ironically titled “Arab Work,” an Israeli slur used to describe shoddy workmanship. The show, where the characters speak an Arabic peppered with Hebrew idioms, lampoons stereotypes of Israel’s Arabs but also their attempts to blend in with their Jewish surroundings.”
“Shown in subtitled Arabic and Hebrew, with a mostly Arab cast, the sitcom is the first in Israel to deal with the predicament of the country’s Arab minority, which has long complained of discrimination. There are some 1.4 million Arab citizens in Israel, about one-fifth of the population, most of them descendants of Palestinians who stayed behind during the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948. Ratings for the first three shows, broadcast Saturday nights on Channel Two, one of Israel’s two main commercial channels, were high, with an average of about half a million Jewish and Arab viewers.”
While the program has been well-received by reviewers in Hebrew newspapers, it did come under criticism from at least one columnist in the Israeli Arab press, who accused Kashua of denigrating his people and promoting negative images of Arab Israelis. Daniel Paran, the producer and originator of the series, said he encountered initial skepticism when he tried to sell the idea of a prime-time show about Israeli Arabs to television broadcasters. “People said, ‘Arabs on prime time? Come on,’” he recalled. But Avi Nir, the CEO of Keshet Broadcasting, the company airing the program, said he was quickly convinced that the idea had potential, because of the talents of the people involved. “People are fed up with round-table debates about the political situation,” Nir said. “But they are interested in the human situation of themselves and the Arabs.”
Limor Assis, 32, a Jewish teacher, said she loved the show. “It deals with a difficult reality in a way you can digest,” she said. “You don’t resist it, even if you have a different opinion. It puts the truth in your face, and even if it’s hard, you don’t get up and walk away.”
Meanwhile, Arab Israelis are not the only ones who face discrimination in Israel…here is what the ‘Model Democracy’ of the Middle East is doing. class room segregation - a blatant racist policy in Israel’s education system towards Ethiopians.
Hundreds gathered in front of City Hall to rally against racial segregation in local school, racism towards Ethiopians in Israeli society. ‘We won’t keep quiet anymore, enough,’ says community leader.
Avi Maspin, a spokesman for IAEJ (The Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews), said that “racism is a word that I have feared using until now, because I did not believe that it could exist in Israel in 2007, but the time has come to call a spade a spade. Israeli society is profoundly infected by racism and unfortunately there is no suitable punishment for racism in Israel.”
Of course not…
