Destined Failure of Interactions between Israeli-Arabs and Jews— An Analysis on Creative Works’ Presentation of Issues from the Jewish Side

Abstract

Sociological research have investigated factors to account for the ethnographic conflicts between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Different from previous studies, this paper inquires the factors on the Jewish side that prevent successful interaction between the two ethnographic groups by looking at crucial scenes in creative works of books and films produced by Israeli authors/directors. The first scene is from the Jewish perspective in Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, in which young Oz, a Jewish boy, attempts to interact with Aisha, a young Israeli-Arab girl, but eventually failed because of an accident. The second scene is from a short Israeli film Bus Station which, from an outsider perspective, depicted a brief encounter between an Arab woman and a Jewish woman in Jerusalem. The third scene is the initially successful yet eventually failed relationship between Eyad, a Palestinian boy, and Naomi, a Jewish girl, in an elite Israeli high school from the 2014 film A Borrowed Identity, which is depicted through Eyad’s Arab perspective. Through the analysis of these three narratives, this paper argues that the burden of national responsibility, family influences, and Israeli government’s discriminatory policies are the three main factors on the Jewish side, in ascender order of importance, that make Arab-Jewish interaction hard in Israel.