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Last update - 13:16 04/08/2008 Straight talk By Asaf Carmel Tags: Maqbula Nassar, radio  Last Sunday. "Straight Talk," a talk show on Radio A-Shams. The second caller who comes on the air wants to talk about the "revealing" clothes of women in the Arab sector. The show's host, Maqbula Nassar, doesn't make it easy for him. "Who gave you the right to decide what a person should wear?" she asks. The next listener answers her: "We don't have to tell people what to wear - everything is written in the Koran." Nassar is unimpressed. "The Koran says a lot of things," she responds, "for example, don't commit adultery and also: give women their share of the inheritance. Do you address the prohibitions that apply to men, or only the ones that relate to women?" Advertisement The discussion gradually heats up; almost all the callers want to discuss the same subject. "When a woman dresses revealingly, she sexually arouses the man," argues a listener from Nazareth. "And the man acts only according to basic instinct?" Nassar retorts. "He is incapable of controlling his urges?" And she says to another caller: "In Saudi Arabia all the women wear a hijab and still there is sexual harassment; the problem is one of education and values." To a listener who argues, "no groom asks his bride to wear skimpy clothes," Nassar responds: "That's because he thinks he owns her and sees her only as a sexual object. If he respected her, he wouldn't care what she wears." Nassar is an unusual phenomenon in Arab society. For more than four years, this young feminist, secular Muslim has been hosting this show on Radio A-Shams, the most popular station in the Arab sector. It broadcasts out of Nazareth and operates within the framework of the Second Authority for Television and Radio. "One woman wrote to me on the station's Web site: 'If I were a man, I wouldn't let you talk to me that way,'" says Nassar. "Other people tell me 'well done,' but they are surprised that a woman can be assertive and argue this way." Audience surveys indicate that Nassar's show, which airs twice a week, is very popular. The spectrum of listeners is broad, but almost all the callers are men. They especially like to discuss taboo topics in Arab society - for example, women and religion; the overwhelming majority wants to preserve the taboos. "Of the 15 people who called in to the show [today], only two supported a woman's right to wear what she wants," says Nassar, who herself was dressed in regular street clothes. "But it seems that extremists enjoy arguing with me. Who can they talk to? To those with whom they agree?" Nassar was born in 1974 in the village of Arrabeh in the Galilee, the 10th of 11 children. Her childhood, she says, left her with a strong feeling of discrimination. "My father was a farmer who lost his livelihood because they didn't give the Arabs enough water for irrigation," she says. "When he tried to sell his onions, he was fined for not have a grower's card. I'm not sure he even knew how to get such a card." It is no wonder that her political consciousness was shaped early on: "At the age of eight, I participated for the first time in a Land Day demonstration. In the environment where I grew up, it was an event that you felt you had to participate in. I also remember the arrests after some of these demonstrations, and how my brothers were among the detainees." Nassar's feminist consciousness also developed at a young age. "In the 1970s my older sisters were the first in Arrabeh to go out to work and they were criticized a lot for doing so," she explains. "I myself worked at a sewing factory in Afula when I was 18. I came with plans to stay for a year, but most of the other girls knew they would work there for their whole lives. At the end of each month they give their minuscule salaries to their fathers. In general, it's amazing to see how capitalism cooperates with social chauvinism. The owner employed a work manager whose sole job was to make sure the girls in the factory acted properly and didn't talk to boys." After that job, Nassar studied social work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When she finished her studies in 1996, she joined the Equality in Marital Rights Action Committee, an organization which, among other things, promoted a bill granting Arab women equal access to family courts and released them from exclusive dependence on sharia and other religious courts. In the course of promoting the bill, Nassar and her colleagues received quite a few insults and threats. She also served as a caseworker in Arab locales and dealt with abused children. 'Outside the bubble' Maqbula Nassar happened on her job at Radio A-Shams by chance. In 2004, she was a panelist on one of its shows, and her articulateness attracted Suheil Karam, the station's owner. He offered her work at the station, but Nassar was hesitant about accepting the offer, even though she had just decided to leave her job as a social worker, which drained her emotionally. In the end, she agreed and Karam gave her the talk show. Very quickly it acquired a large audience of detractors. The peak was when the show disclosed the story of a group of lesbian Arab women who established an organization called Asawad. "Tons of listeners called the show and were irate that the station allowed these women to speak," relates Nassar. "For my part I said it's impossible to prevent them from living according to their choice. I couldn't accept the fact that a listener would say that they are sick women and then just move on, as if I respected all the different opinions." Discussion of the matter continued for many weeks during which Nassar was subject to threats. "On the radio station Web site, some threatened to slaughter me, and there was also a sheikh who slandered me in his Friday sermon," she says. "I was under pressure, but I didn't believe I would be harmed. The anger stemmed also from a lack of understanding. Some people thought that if we're defending homosexuals on the radio, it would push people to be that way." Nassar says she lives today in Haifa, surrounded by young, liberal Arabs. "The people here, who advocate living together before marriage, and civil or mixed marriages, live in a bubble," she explains. "Thanks to the show, I am exposed to what goes on outside the bubble, but I'm surprised every time again to discover the gaps." However, the gap she sees is not limited exclusively to issues of religion and gender. "For me, it's important to reduce the sense of inferiority that prevails among the Arab public. Because of all the discrimination, people have started believing that they aren't entitled to equality. When you talk, for example, about children who are run over next to their homes by relatives, listeners ask why this doesn't happen in Jewish society. I answer that this isn't a logical comparison because we don't have the same living conditions. When Arab children have nowhere to play in their village, how is it possible to absolve the establishment of responsibility?" Despite the feelings of discrimination you and your audience have, do you also advocate coexistence? Nassar: "No. Coexistence is not a value. I call on the society to take pride in its identity and advocate equality. If there will be equality, we won't need to talk about coexistence. Besides, I'm against coexistence that amounts to hummus and festivals. Here in Haifa, in Wadi Nisnas, there is the 'Festival of Festivals' [in honor of Hanukkah, Christmas and Ramadan - A.C.]. Why don't they do that in Denya? Would the high-tech people from there, who come down to the wadi en masse to eat hummus, suffer if thousands of Arabs would come to their neighborhood?" In addition to her work at the station, Nassar is photographing the remnants of Palestinian villages abandoned in 1948. "In 2003 I traveled to a conference of Palestinian women in Cyprus," she explains. "There were refugees there from Lebanon, Canada, Australia and other places who longed to see what their villages look like. I pass by some of these villages every day, and I promised to bring them a memento the next time we meet. When I returned to Israel I decided to photograph the villages." In the meantime Nassar, herself the daughter of a refugee from the village of Hittin, has documented 75 such locales, mostly in the north. Her photos have been published in various Arab newspapers, and have appeared in exhibitions in Europe and in the Nahar Albarad refugee camp in Lebanon. For her, the pictures are not intended solely for preserving memories. "I am part of a group of people who believe that the solution to the conflict will be achieved through a single, secular democratic state and the implementation of the right of return," says Nassar. "There is no peace between a victorious nation and a defeated nation. It is an illusion to think that the situation can continue where the Jews have the upper hand and they control all the resources and all the weapons, and the other nation continues to live with little land, dispersed and scattered all over the world." An attempt to ask Nassar to confront the perspective of the Jewish majority in the state quickly turns out to be pointless. "I have no desire to find favor in the eyes of either my society or the Zionists," she explains. "I certainly think that the right of return is practical. Just like Israel absorbed one million immigrants in 10 years, it can absorb the Palestinian refugees. Jewish society is after all built on the memory of thousands of years, so why are you asking me to forget?" When the conversation reverts back to calmer tones, Nassar says that all 10 of her siblings are still living in Arrabeh; most are married and have families. She herself is single, but her family is not pressuring hrt to get married. "In the background there's this constant buzzing coming from my mother who says, 'Why didn't you go out like all the girls?' But the truth is that I'm lucky. My family is proud of what I'm doing, although they don't talk about it much. They are traditional, but really not restrictive. Other girls from my background, for example, those who worked in the sewing factory with me, did not manage to get anywhere in terms of self-fulfillment and realizing their ambitions. Their only way to redeem themselves was to get married. "A year ago, our family divided up the little land that my father, who died in 2001, had," Nassar continues. "I'm the only one of the daughters who received an inheritance; all my sisters conceded theirs. If my brothers had acted according to the Koran, I would have received only half of what they got. But they gave me the same as everyone else. My brothers already know who I am: I didn't even have to fight for my share." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Iranian row Rice on possible IDF Iran strike: U.S. has no veto over Israeli military operations. Hamas movie set Hamas transforms former Gaza settlement into movie production house.   1.   Give her a bodyguard 15:31  |  Yael G 04/08/08   2.   Peace is always between a victorious nation and a defeated nation 17:02  |  Genuine Tosefta 04/08/08   3.   #1 - Let her provide her own bodyguard 00:51  |  Slibovitz 05/08/08   4.   YEAH! 22:46  |  Nicole 08/08/08

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