"You have the honor of being the first subject of my new column, 'Tabula Rasa,' on the Al-Monitor website," I told him. "Now pick a restaurant."

“Why me?”

"Because you succeeded where all your politicians pretty much failed. You brought the Israeli Arab right into the living room of the Israeli Jews, and you did it in primetime. You even managed to stir up empathy toward the Israeli Arab."

I’m not sure that author and journalist Sayed Kashua takes this as a compliment, but he really did do that with his weekly articles in the Haaretz supplement, his books and most recently, with the series he wrote for Israeli television’s Channel Two. Somehow, Kashua has managed to penetrate the barrier of utter apathy and bring the country’s Arab citizens back to the tribal hearth in Jewish homes across the country. "Avoda Aravit" (Arab Labor), which takes its title from a common term in Israel, expressing contempt for the quality of work, is an Arab-language series about an Arab family and the ordeals it faces in its attempts to integrate into an Israeli society plagued by stereotypes and racism.