Lost in Translation

Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian-Israeli writer who grew up in the Arab town of Tira, a short drive from Tel Aviv. He is best known for his books and his sitcom, Avoda Aravit (Arab Labor), about how it is to be an Arab in the Jewish state.

Last week, Kashua wrote in his regular column in Haaretz that he was hosting two Sderot families in his home in Jerusalem and had room for two more. The column was otherwise a sardonic take on Israel's stance toward Gaza:

From my acquaintance with Arabs, I tell you: They simply have a mental problem. There's nothing to it. No matter what you do, they will come back with complaints. Aalek, Gaza is one big prison of refugees, the jobless and the starving. Hey, is that our fault? Hey, is it because of us that they're like that?

It's not that they fire Qassams and say it's because they don't have anything to eat. No. They fire them and say that the gates of hell will be opened on the Zionist enemy and that they want to expel us from our homeland. Right. Hey, are we supposed to be responsible for every hungry Arab kid?

Anyways, perhaps because of an awkward Hebrew-to-English translation, I took Kashua's Sderot comment to mean that he was straddling the divide between feeling sympathy for the Gazan victims of the Israeli attacks as well as helping his fellow Israeli citizens who were getting rocketed, and I called him up.

"I'm sorry," he said. "A number of people have called me about the Sderot thing. It was sarcasm, I'm not hosting anyone."

So much for that. Kashua said that he hasn't gotten requests to stay in his home and that it might be more dangerous for Sderot residents there than if they stayed in the South. He added that he would only feel comfortable hosting Sderot families if he was also hosting Gazan families.