Lucy Aharish is the first Arab-Muslim news presenter on mainstream Hebrew language television. She sat down in an interview with Bari Weiss to discuss what it was like to grow up as a member of the only Arab Muslim family in Dimona, her family’s experience in Israel on October 7, and her sometimes conflicting identities.
Bari Weiss described her as a “woman of strong convictions and moral backbone.” When she sat down for the interview, Bari Weiss initially described her as representing 20% of the Israeli public as an Israeli-Arab. Aharish responds, “I don’t know if I represent the 20%, because a lot of people say well ‘she doesn’t represent us.’ I don’t pretend to represent anyone, I represent myself because I have a unique story. I haven’t lived in an Arab town or an Arab village.”
Aharish says that she is grateful for her parents’ decision to live in Dimona because it was a “gift” to live with Jewish people for her whole life. Aharish celebrated Jewish holidays alongside Muslim ones growing up. However she says she did experience racism and bullying as the only Arab-Muslim in her school, particularly after terrorist attacks.
She said, “The morning after a terrorist attack, I didn’t want to go to school. I knew what I was going to go through that day…People would say death to Arabs, we need to kill all the Palestinians. And then they would say ‘but Lucy, we don’t mean you. You and your family are ok but the rest of the Palestinians, the Arabs, we need to kill them, we need to murder them all.’ I can understand that and I try to understand that but I was bullied.”
She said that when she would get home, she would cry. She said that her father told her she should never respond back and call them 'filthy Jew' because ”You will never go down to this level because you are better than them.” In spite of this experience she refuses to label herself as a victim.
In the interview she explains, “After a terror attack, you’re not only sad, but angry and you have a lot of feelings of wanting revenge. You need revenge because you cannot understand, or digest, or accept the fact that there is someone going on the bus and exploding himself in front of innocent people and killing innocent people.”
Aharish's encounter with terrorism
When Aharish was five at the beginning of the first intifada in 1987, she was in a terrorist attack with her family while they were visiting the Gaza Strip on a shopping trip. She and her family were in their car when it exploded. She remembers her father calling out for help, saying that they were Arab, but nobody came to help. After 20 minutes, IDF forces removed her family from the scene.
After this experience, she said she really hated Arabs and Palestinians. She said she would say it out loud, and her extended family heard her. When they spoke about it to her father, he said that when she grows up she will understand that the world is more complicated and it is not so black and white. She added, “and I did.”
Aharish said that many people think that the violence on October 7 was new, but she says it was not new, and she saw the same evil in the eyes of the person who committed the terror attack against her family in 1987. She says that after October 7, Arab-Israelis are realizing that they share the same destiny as the Jewish-Israelis in the country. When Hamas terrorists met a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, and he identified himself, regardless, the terrorists said he was cooperating with Israel, and killed him for it.
Racism against Arabs in Israel
While describing her experience in Israel as an Israeli-Arab, she unequivocally states that Israel is not an apartheid state, however, there is a lot of racism here that must be fought. “I’m a presenter on a mainstream channel in Israel, my sister works at a major bank in Israel, and my other sister is a general manager of a big hotel in Eilat. So no its not apartheid.”
On racism, she discussed the backlash she and her Jewish-Israeli husband received when they got married. She is married to the Fauda star, Tsahi Halevi. They currently have a son who she identifies as Muslim and Jewish.
When they married, the Education Ministry wrote a letter saying that their marriage could not be accepted because it represented assimilation. She says, “My child won't study in the Education Ministry of the state of Israel when the Ministry is basically telling him you don’t have a place here. And if I need to sue the Ministry of Education in Israel I will do that.”
Israel's future
Towards the end of the interview, Aharish discussed the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic country. She said, “This country has to be Jewish and democratic because the Jewish people have no other option to be democratic because they were persecuted because they went through the Holocaust because six million were murdered because they were Jewish, because of antisemitism. As a Jewish person, you cannot allow yourself to be something else other than democratic.” She described herself as the keeper of Israeli democracy in the face of the extremists who wish to push Israel in another direction. She also described this country as a miracle for being the only Jewish state, as well as a democracy.
Regarding October 7, she says “We need to tell the truth. We lost. For hours and hours, people were burned and raped and murdered in their houses. In their safest place. In the haven of the Jewish people. In their own country…people waited for someone to come and rescue them and nobody came…Nothing.”
Despite this, she says she cannot allow Hamas to take away her humanity. She said, “In the beginning of these days, they killed compassion.” In the last few days, she has started looking at images from Gaza, although it is difficult for her. “No one in this world should experience what we experienced, and what the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing.” She concluded that we need to be part of a solution.