Passing as… in Arab Labor by Sayed Kashua on Israeli TV

Abstract

Twenty per cent of Israel’s population are Palestinians who despite being the indigenous people of the land are its second-class citizens. Sayed Kashua, an Israeli-Palestinian writer and journalist stages in his long running comedy drama on Israeli television with humour, irony and sarcasm life’s realities for Palestinian citizens of Israel among the Jews. It is argued that their relationship is that of the colonised among the coloniser as characterised by postcolonial writers such as Bhabha, Fanon and Memi. The series, while focusing on the fragile identity of its Palestinian anti-hero, also shows that the colonising state of affairs affects not only the Palestinians but the Jews too. The article, in addition to providing the political context to Kashua’s text, analyses those episodes in the series in which Palestinians and Jews ‘pass as… the other’. It is argued that ‘passing as’ is an extreme response to living in anomalous circumstances and is motivated not only by a wish to improve one’s everyday life, but, in addition, by deeper, often, unconscious desires.