SFJFF 30: 'Arab Labor' and 'Sayed Kashua - Running Scared'

We are too politically correct in the US to tolerate a sitcom on primetime like Sayed Kashua's Arab Labor, but it's a pity, because laughing this hard at our thorniest, nastiest race-related problems would probably do us all a lot of good and - more's to the point - foster greater understanding across racial divides. Kashua is this year's recipient of the SFJFF's Freedom of Expression Award, and as an Arab-Israeli writer who gets non-stop flak in his country while at the same time creating one of the funniest, most controversial and yet widely loved television shows on Israeli television, a show which dives straight into the sticky heart of Arab-Israeli relations, he more than deserves it. When you watch the sitcom, which is flat-out hilarious, fearlessly probing the hypocrisies and prejudices that define Arab-Israeli relations at the mainstream level, and then see the documentary Sayed Kashua - Forever Scared by Dorit Zimbalist which follows Kashua's trials in Israeli society over a period of 7 years, it is an astonishing, devastating experience, an incredible double-bill which runs the emotional gamut from hilarity and farce through irony, absurdity, hatred, misunderstanding, recognition, enlightenment, confusion, exasperation and defiance all the way to outright fear: that Forever Scared tag is no joke. Sayed Kashua is positioned between communities that, at their (easily visible) extremes threaten him with collaboration on the one hand and transfer on the other. Reviews in Ha'aretz (for which he writes a weekly column himself) have variously decried him as "a traitor and a bad writer" "an affront to the Arab image" and "a rotting corpse"; the Arabic weekly Fasl Al Maqal has publicly demanded the termination of the series; Kashua has been forced to leave his hometown in nothern Israel after the publication of his second novel which was harshly critical of Arabs, only to move to a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem in which he feels extremely cautious and out of place ... the reality of life for this brilliant, fearless writer, who continues to stick his neck out despite being racked by anxiety about his own and his family's tenuous position in Israeli society is beyond 'tense' in the way we understand race relations to be in this country. The guy deserves a medal. His consistently controversial books, statements, columns, speeches, etc. are the work of a man who is outraged to his core, who longs for normalcy in a society which rejects him for not taking clear sides and can only embrace him abstractly through book sales and TV ratings; it is a sort of modern tragedy, a double-bind which comes to us as a painful illustration of what life can be like for people who are prepared to break conventional molds. This is no 'pet Arab' in Israeli life; Kashua's criticism of the occupation is relentless, his use of irony as a weapon against Israeli platitudes quite startling - see the quote below - and yet he has clearly suffered at the hands of his own community as well, a suffering which seems rooted in his relationship with his father, though the documentary only hints at this dimension. His novels, the 2002 Dancing Arabs, which catapulted him to fame, and 2004's Let it Be Morning, both written in Hebrew, are probably more forthcoming than the documentary on this score. Both are available in English. The latter is not available in Arabic.

Below is a quote from the film, presumably an extract from one of his columns. The tone of arch cynicism could not be further from the delightful, outrageously funny repartee of Arab Labor, except in one crucial respect - its fearlessness. It's ironic, given the level of fear he is living with perpetually - but Kashua is a master of irony. See the SFJFF site for showtimes and more details. Sayed Kashua - Running Scared plays with one episode of last season's Arab Labor, just to get you in the picture, and Arab Labor: Season 2 gives us three episodes of the current season's shows straight from the editing room. Don't miss them - Arab-Israeli sitcoms are not exactly mainstream entertainment in these parts.


"You the Israeli people are fucking us, killing us, slaughtering us, hating, abusing, conquering, and raising countless new suicide bombers. And still, I love you, I'm crazy about you, can't do without you. If only the Palestinians watched movies about the holocaust, if only they could understand what a ghetto is, what it means to be without freedom ... But the Palestinians are an obtuse people, who refuse to understand. I know them personally, and I can tell you they refuse to understand us, understand that the settlements, the occupation, and denying them their human rights are an essential part of preserving the life of the Jewish people. Stubborn people who refuse to understand that the tanks, checkpoints, mortars and soldiers are part of the most moral army in human history. Fact - there are no gas chambers. They should say thank you and shut up, thank God they weren't Nazi victims, and be thankful they didn't suffer the holocaust"

Sayed Kashua (translated from Hebrew)