ABSTRACT
Gabriela Jonas Aharoni discusses the evolution of the Israeli telenovela genre, from notable beginnings until its disappearance from the Israeli television screens and its return in the second decade of the third millennium in novel hybrid variants. Fourteen years after the first Israeli telenovela aired, the genre disappeared and set the stage for daily dramas that incorporate distinctive telenovela features. Jonas Aharoni contends that the genre of the telenovela on Israeli television is going through a continual hybridization process—as part of the shifts and changes that characterize the globalization era. In its most recent and fascinating instance, this unique hybrid of telenovela and television drama evolved to address in different ways the social and political reality in Israel, and specifically issues of identity, ethnicity and gender.
