BICOM

A 33-year-old Arab mother of three and microbiologist was crowned this year’s winner of one of Israel’s most popular television contests over the weekend.

Last week’s semi-final of Masterchef attracted an audience of 37.8 per cent of Israeli households according to Haaretz, making it possibly the country’s most popular television programme. In this weekend’s final, Dr Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, who holds a PhD in microbiology defeated Ido Kronenberg of the central Israeli town of Savyon, and Meseret Woldimikhal, an immigrant to Israel from Ethiopia. Atamna-Ismaeel, who comes from the northern Arab town of Baqa al-Garbiya, commented after her victory that winning the contest was “one of the most exciting experiences of my life.” She said that she planned to use her winnings to set up a Jewish-Arab cooking school throughout Israel. Throughout the programme, Atamna-Ismaeel frequently referred to her desire to make Arab food more prominent in Israeli cuisine.

Atamna-Ismaeel’s victory was the latest in a series of successes on Israeli reality TV for members of minority communities. Several months ago, Rose Fostanes, a 47-year-old carer from the Philippines was voted by the public as the winner of Israel’s hugely popular inaugural season of the X-Factor reality contest. Meanwhile, in August, Ethiopian-born Tahunia Rubel was crowned as the winner of Israel’s Big Brother. A year ago, German-born Catholic convert to Judaism Tom Franz won Israel’s previous season of Masterchef. The other two finalists on the reality cooking show on that occasion were Salma Fiomy-Farij, a hijab-wearing Arab citizen, and Jacki Azulay, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman.