Abstract
This chapter studies the writing of Sasson Somekh, Anton Shammas and Sayed Kashua through the lens of their personal biographies, their background and their language choice. All three are native speakers of Arabic, albeit, from three different generations and three different faiths, but they all choose to write in Hebrew. The language choices of these authors help us understand the asymmetrical relationship between Israelis and Arabs, as well as the global linguistic homogenisation and perhaps the effects of collective traumas on the individual. The chapter concludes with a section on the ‘Arab Jew’, and the challenges of maintaining both constructs of this identity in Israel, in the case of the documentary of the ‘Ethnic Devil’ broadcast on Israeli television in summer 2013, and the case of the sociologist and poet, Sami Chetrit, an Arab Jew who does not speak Arabic.
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