The AFP reports on the latest palestinian Arab appropriation of Israeli culture: a Hamas response to hit Israeli show Fauda.
But it actually some almost throwaway lines to which we should be paying the most attention.
To watch any Israeli TV series means supporting the “normalization” of relations with the Jewish state, argued Soraya, who is directing Hamas’s own TV series on the conflict.
He charged that such shows “support the Zionist occupation” because their plots “criminalize the Palestinian people,” speaking with AFP in the Gaza City studio.
“We want to flip the equation, to show the Palestinian point of view, to broadcast a drama about the spirit of our resistance.”
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To get into character, Harouda said he “soaked up the script,” but added that being too convincing can lead to trouble.
“Some women look at me and pray that I die,” he said, leaning back in his boss’s chair in the fake Shin Bet office.
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In Gaza productions, Israeli characters speak in Arabic. And, at the request of the Hamas mufti, or Islamic jurist, women wear their headscarves even if they play Jewish characters.
“In one series, I played a Jewish woman,” said one actress, Kamila Fadel, who added that she may have been just a little too convincing for her own good.
“After the series was broadcast, a woman tried to strangle me,” she recounted.
“She told me: ‘I hate you, you are hurting us so much’. On another day a 13-year-old boy threw a stone at my head thinking I was Jewish… This means I played my part well.”
A Gazan woman trying to strangle, and a 13-year-old throwing a stone at, a person they think are Jewish. Yup, that certainly seems to capture the essence of palestinian Arab society. And the way this is casually buried in the report seems to capture the nature of the mainstream media.
Hat tip: Michal
