Ghada Zoabi had a dream. The founder and owner of the popular website Bokra (tomorrow in Arabic) wanted to create a news portal for Israeli Arab society which would connect it to the state of Israel and update its readers on what was happening there. For years, the Arab sector has felt absent from the national media, and rightfully so. In most cases, media coverage adopted a negative perspective, covering the community when there was a murder or other criminal activity, or when it was suspected of posing a threat to the country’s security. But what really goes on in the Arab towns and villages? Who are these citizens, who live in Israel, who want to be recognized and who hope to be more involved? For the most part, the Israeli press takes no interest in such issues.
So Zoabi, a 35-year-old mother of three from Nazareth, decided to take up the gauntlet. But she wasn’t satisfied simply with creating a media channel that serves the more than 1.5 million residents, who make up more than 20% of the country’s population. She wanted to draw them closer to Israeli society. “I will do whatever it takes to connect the two sectors, who live in the same country, but who learn nothing and know nothing about each other. That is the blockage that exists right now,” she said in an interview with Al-Monitor.
