Jerusalem/Agency Caucasus – The Israeli administration has responded positively to a recent demand by the Circassians in the country that some of the programmes should be broadcast in Circassian.
The Circassian children in Kfar-Kama and Rayhaniya will be able to watch some Israeli-made programmes and cartoons in their own language.
It is the Nafna, a Circassian non-governmental organization, which first delivered its demand to the administration of Israel that some programmes should be broadcasted in Circassian, according to Maariv, an Israeli daily newspaper. When the Nafna’s proposal to care for the Circassian language received support from both officials and institutions, it became practically easier to have the programmes broadcast in the mother tongue. The Nafna had formerly made it possible for online radio broadcasting in Circassian, Hebrew, English and Arabic to the entire Diaspora.
The Circassians were first settled in the area during the Ottoman Empire. They jointly fought with the Palestinians against the birth of Israel. There are as many as four thousand Circassians living in the two villages with the aim of keeping their cultural values alive. The elderly Circassians tend to use the Hebrew language in their daily life more often than they speak in their mother tongue. There are, however, very few teenagers who can speak the Circassian language at all. That is basically the reason that the Nafna is trying hard to have some of the Israeli programmes broadcast in the Circassian language.
The Circassians constitute one of the Muslim communities in Israel where the administration does not view them as a threat to itself at all, and therefore tries to embrace them. RE/ÖZ/FT
