The Elephant in the Living Room

Israel is a small country surrounded by menacing enemies, so invariably one community or another is suffering from the aggressions of our neighbors at any given time. During the Gulf War Saddam's missiles were all aimed at the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. In the second intifada the residents of Gilo in Jerusalem absorbed gunfire from Palestinian militants in Bet Jallah across the way. During the second Lebanon war the entire northern portion of the state came under rocket fire from Hizbollah. Today it's the citizens of Sderot and the rural settlements around the Gaza Strip. It's the luck of the draw: if your community happens to be the bull's eye on the target, normal life is transformed into living hell. On the other hand, if you're out of range you carry on doing what you always do, as if you're in Iceland somewhere.

The television is what keeps us all connected to our unfolding reality, bringing the misery and suffering of our compatriots and neighbors right into the living room, ensuring none of us ever forgets where we really live. Each of the three local channels operates a crack news team, with predictably aesthetic visages broadcasting the latest events from fancy studios in real time.

Not surprisingly, most of the local programming is unabashedly escapist: talented young singers and dancers competing for instant fame, glossy, sculpted Jewish hotties trying to survive on a desert island. The imported programs like CSI, Law and Order and the Dog Whisperer whisk us ot other places on the globe where the most pressing problems are how to solve a crime or educate your pet. Even the commercials transport us to another place. My current favorite is for a bank, showing a gang of kids playing with a supermarket cart in the desert, transforming this most unromantic of objects into a vehicle for flight and fantasy, all for the token sum of a five shekel deposit.

However, amidst the vapid , celebrity-obsessive zeitgeist of Israeli television there remains a cadre of programmers who insist on using this medium to explore the Arab-Israeli conflict at a more intimate level than the news. Thought you could turn on the box and get away from it all? Not a chance. The world's most volatile disagreement is in our living room, and it's surprisingly compelling.

The current show running for several months is called Avodah Aravit, or Arab labor, a play on the concept of avodah ivrit, Jewish labor, a pillar of the Zionist ethos of the pioneers that built the state. This sitcom, written by Sayed Kashua, a well-know Israeli Arab journalist (whose book 'Dancing Arabs' is on my favorites list at the bottom of this website) protrays his alter-ego, Amjad, an Arab journalist working for a Jewish newspaper. Surrounded by a cast of supporting Arabs and Jews who fit every possible current stereotype, Amjad is interviewed in the various media as a spokesman for the Arab sector, buys a car from a sleazy used-car salesman, rescues his friend from an apparent terrorist kidnapping, searches for an appropriate preschool for his daughter, attends a passover seder, accompanies his pregnant wife to the obstetrician and goes into therapy to explore his confusing identity as an Arab living in Israel. Each episode cleverly highlights one of the many absurdities in our behavior towards one another and within our own cultures in Israel of the 21st century. Both sides receive equal treatment as their strengths and weaknesses come under the microscope. We are forced to examine the stereotypes and evaluate their origins, each time from a different angle. The series is funny, entertaining, insightful and thought-provoking, all at the same time. Somehow, it manages to make us endearing, in a Keystone Kops sort of way.

Up next is a soon-to-premiere series called 'All-Consuming,' a translation which does no justice to its Hebrew name Ochelet Yoshveya. The series, about two women chefs, one Israeli and one Palestinian, who compete against one another in a reality show, takes its name from an infamous biblical description of the land of Israel. Moses has sent a team of men to spy out the land and report back to him. Bearing a bunch of grapes so big it has to be carried on a pole by two men, they return and Caleb describes the land as one"flowing with milk and honey," advocating immediate conquest. Others, however, beg to differ and paint the picture of "a land that devours its inhabitants," eretz ochelet yoshveyha. A tv show about chefs in the land that devours its inhabitants sound extremely promising just from the title.

By nature, I'd typically much rather read a book in the evening. More and more, however, I'm finding that amidst a world of money-driven, intolerable drivel some very creative minds are working to create quality, relevant television in Israel. Will wonders never cease?