Lucy Aharish

Background

Aharish was born in 1981 in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, to Maaruf and Salwa Aharish, Arab Israeli Muslim parents originally from Nazareth. She is the youngest of three daughters. Growing up, she was the only Arab student at her school. On Purim she dressed up as Queen Esther, and on Israeli Independence Day she wore blue and white. Later, in 2015, Aharish praised her former high school principal Meir Cohen (currently a Knesset member with the Yesh Atid party) for having fostered an uncompromising stance against racism.

In the summer of 1987, a few months before she turned six years old, she was slightly injured when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at her family's car by Palestinian militants, while driving in the Gaza Strip.

During her adolescence, she says she believed right-wing politics: "I am an Arab who grew up among Moroccan Jews. That's the worst. You learn the hard-core shticks; they have a very short fuse. I was a right-wing Muslim, a fan of Beitar (Jerusalem soccer club with nationalistic fans)." She now identifies with the left.

While at university, she drifted towards becoming a devout Muslim, although subsequently distances herself from the religious life. The idea of pursuing a career in media developed after she moved to Jerusalem to study social sciences and theater at the Hebrew University. "[O]n Highway 1 I saw Arabs being taken off a van and made to face the wall, with rifles aimed at them. I felt that no human being deserves that, and then the penny dropped. But it's also impossible to ignore what the Palestinians are doing." After graduating from Hebrew University, she studied journalism at the Koteret school in Tel Aviv and then interned for a year and a half at a school in Germany.

Career

Upon returning from Germany, Aharish moved to Tel Aviv. Following a two-week stint as an Arab affairs reporter for Yedioth Ahronoth, in 2007, she became the first Arab to present the news on mainstream Israeli television when she was hired by Channel 10. After leaving that job in 2008, owing to professional differences, she went on to report for Channel 10's Erev Tov ("Good Evening") with Guy Pines and to co-host a morning radio show with Emmanuel Rosen and Maya Bengal.

Aharish currently co-hosts Channel One's late-night show, Nivheret ha-Halomot ("The Dream Team"), as well as Hamahadura ("The Edition"), a current events program for teens.

Aharish's time as anchor at i24news was one of some volatility, for example during Operation Protective Edge, she conducted an on-air interview with a Hamas official in Gaza, where she accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields and called on Gazan residents to rebel against the Hamas regime. During this same period, the station's CEO Frank Melloul was filmed taking the Ice Bucket Challenge, the timing of which was lambasted in the French press. Aharish interviewed late Israeli President Shimon Peres in the Jaffa studios of i24news. Weekly press review segments were provided by media correspondent Anthony Grant, a former blogger for The New York Times.

In April 2015, Aharish was one of twelve Israeli personalities chosen to light torches in the official ceremony kicking off Israel's 67th Independence Day celebrations.

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