The Arab Public Sphere in Israel: Media Space and Cultural Resistance, by Amal Jamal (Book Review)

The Arab Public Sphere in Israel by Amal Jamal is an important book. It focuses on an almost invisible minority, the Arab citizens of Israel, and offers an unprecedented account—indeed, a historical benchmark—of media production and consumption among them. Essentially, the book argues and documents the resilience of this national minority against all odds, namely the consequences of this minority's active opposition to the establishment of the state and its personal and political ties with the state's declared enemies, along with its initial physical and cultural isolation within Israel on the one hand and from neighboring Arab countries on the other. These conditions, which could conceivably lead to deterioration and despair, have instead resulted, according to Jamal, in a vibrant counter-hegemonic public sphere.