Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Israelis and Arabs Are Already Lovers — Kissing Video or No

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s education minister and the head of the Jewish Home Party, decided to ban Dorit Rabinyan’s book, “Borderlife,” from the literature curriculum in schools.

The reason? The book depicts a love affair between a Palestinian and a Jew.

This, of course, caused quite a backlash. People protested with angry social media posts, and by buying the book, which has since become a bestseller.

The Tel Aviv branch of Time Out decided to mount their own protest, in the form of a viral video. It took inspiration from a pre-existing strangers kissing strangers video, but added a political twist. It shows Israeli and Arab strangers kissing each other. Watch out, it gets pretty steamy:

The video has since been mysteriously removed from Facebook. Haaretz confirmed that Facebook did not remove the video. The video had over 100,000 views at the time of its removal.

Did the video cause too much discomfort? Did Time Out cross a line that should not have been crossed?

At the end of the video, when asked what it’s like to kiss someone of a different religious background, one of the participants answered, “Not as strange as the [Israeli-Arab] conflict.”

But the truth is, Israeli and Arab couples are not at all a strange sight at all.

Arab and Jewish couples are not just the random strangers that kiss each other in viral videos, or even the unknown families posting photos on “Jews and Arabs Refuse To Be Enemies,”; they are an integral part of Israeli society. They are some of Israel’s greatest cultural symbols.

Talented actor Yousef (Joe) Sweid was married to Yael Ronen, an Israeli Jewish theater director. They have one son, Alex. And while the couple did separate last year, Sweid is now reportedly dating another famous Jewish girl, Adi Shilon, a TV and radio host.

Sweid, who was in many Israeli movies and plays, has starred in American shows like “American Odyssey” and will be in the next season of “Game of Thrones.”

Mira Awad, the beloved Palestinian Christian singer and actress, who represented Israel with Achinoam Nini at the Eurovision of 2009, and who starred in the comedy “Avoda Aravit” (Arab Labor), is married to Jewish Israeli Kosta Mogilevych, a businessman and former acrobat, eight years her junior.

Norman Issa, the actor and much beloved star of “Arab Labor,” is married to famous Israeli playwright Gidona Raz. They have three children.

These are just three couples, out of many. So, you can delete videos from Facebook, and ban books because, as the ministry said, they promote “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.” But the truth is these two identities have not been separate in decades, and these intimate relationships are already deeply interwoven into the fabric of Israeli society.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.