From the Margins to Prime Time: Israeli Arabs on Israeli Television: The Case of Sayed Kashua's 'Arab Labour'

Over recent decades, with the growing debate over multiculturalism in Israel, the
representation of minorities in mass media has received new attention. The current
research discusses the place of Israeli Arabs on Israeli television through the casestudy of Arab Labour (In Hebrew, Avoda Aravit), a satirical sitcom written by Sayed
Kashua (Channel 2, Keshet, 2007, 2010, 2012), which focuses on the shattered
identity of Arab Israelis
Our research shows that Arab Labour has triggered off changes in the way Arab
Israelis are represented on Israeli television, in terms of their visibility on television,
the quality of that visibility, and their interaction with the majority group. We
examine a corpus of episodes dealing with three central themes: the Israeli identity
card; attitudes to Jewish holidays and Jewish history; and the memory of the 1948
War versus the Nakba.