Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

JERUSALEM — It could be a broadcasting studio in anywhere USA: too-cold air-conditioning, plywood desk, yellowing sound baffles and worn, colorless carpet.

Coaxed by a cool-voiced announcer, the callers could be expressing concerns also heard in anywhere USA: unemployment, unresponsive telephone companies, government neglect of poverty-stricken areas, a lack of television programming reflecting minority concerns.

What's striking is what isn't heard: concern about the peace process, relations with Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority, worries about war.

For this afternoon call-in show is from Jerusalem's Israel Radio studios and its audience is the entire Jewish state. Hosted by veteran radio announcer and journalist Elihu Ben Onn, "Listening to Our Listeners" is a peek behind the curtains of domestic Israeli life. Most of the two-hour show is dominated by concerns far from those aired in the august pages of the New York Times, known for its thorough coverage of Israeli affairs, or even in Israel's daily papers. This show looks at the day-to-day issues on the minds of average Israelis.

Ben Onn, who has hosted the show since returning to Israel Radio last spring after a two-year stint as spokesman for the country's national police, says the calls on a recent afternoon are typical of what he has been receiving lately.

The first caller is Yaakov from Kiryat Gat, a poor town near Beersheva on the edge of the Negev Desert.

"Fifty years ago there were plenty of jobs in Kiryat Gat," he says. "Now there are no jobs in the Negev. What is the government going to do?"

He goes on to complain about "foreign" workers (mostly Asian and Central European non-Jews) who are taking minimum wage jobs that pay too little for Israelis to live on.

"Send the foreign workers home," he cries, echoing a refrain often heard in poorer corners of America where immigration is high.

The next caller, Ronni from Ramat Gan, an upscale suburb of Tel Aviv, jumps to the defense of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

The new government, he says, "is dealing with three years of recession from Netanyahu."

Ronni's suggestion for economic prosperity: Cut government spending on religious schools and settlements over the Green Line, which separates pre-1967 Israel from areas under its control now.

But Ronni is not unsympathetic to Yaakov's plight.

"The government should spend money on Kiryat Gat, not on Samaria [in the West Bank]," he says.

Ben Onn predicts the next caller will be someone religious to defend Israeli government support of yeshivas and other religious schools. But caller No. 3, Yechiel of Tel Aviv, also comes to Barak's defense.

It isn't until the end of the show — after callers asking for Romanian-language TV shows, criticizing the "Orange" cell phone company and complaining that the Hebrew word for "husband" translates as "master" or "lord," while wife means simply "woman" — that a religious caller finally breaks through.

"The ideal society is a religious one," says Yehoshua from Jerusalem, a ba'al tshuvah (a recent returnee to religious life). "There are no problems in it."

Throughout the show, Ben Onn acts as a neutral moderator. He tries to pull coherent and well-reasoned arguments out of his callers, but he never hectors or belittles them. And unlike some U.S. radio personalities, he never cuts off callers with recorded machine-gun fire or pushes his own political agenda. His biggest compliment, he says, is that no one knows what his political views are.

His reasons are both practical and legal. The national radio is under constraints to provide a non-ideological forum. More practically, Ben Onn says he would lose half of his audience if he tilted toward one side or the other. In fact, the show has more impact because of his restraint.

Ben Onn says that debate over the peace process with Syria and the Palestinians is largely over within Israeli society. People expect settlements of those ancient disputes, even if they may disagree on the particulars. Israeli society has moved on. A listener goes away feeling that Israelis' concerns are no different from those of other nations: employment, the economy, education. Concerns that reflect a mature society not feeling threatened in its future.