Politics of food in the Arab–Israeli conflict

A significant facet of the Arab–Israeli conflict deals with a cultural struggle over national cuisines. Foods like falafel and hummus, which originated in Middle Eastern cuisine, have historically been politicized in general expressions of gastronationalism throughout the region. The development of Israeli cuisine occurred largely through the mixing of Jewish diasporic cuisines with Levantine cuisine, including Palestinian cuisine. This effort aided the effective definition of the national identity of Israel as that of a melting pot, but simultaneously prompted claims of cultural appropriation, particularly with regard to the Palestinian people. More specifically, critics of Israeli cuisine's incorporation of dishes that are traditionally seen as part of Arab cuisine assert that Israel lacks recognition for their Palestinian aspects, disqualifying the process as one of cultural diffusion. Opposition to Israeli cuisine in the Arab world revolves around the accusation that dishes of Palestinian origin, or other Arab dishes to which there have been significant Palestinian contributions, are presented by Israel in a way that suppresses or omits the role of the Palestinians in their development.

Although Middle Eastern foods were naturally part of Mizrahi Jewish cuisine before the development of Israeli cuisine, not all of them were exclusively Jewish foods and instead overlapped with Arab foods. As such, from the Palestinian perspective, the downplaying of Palestinian food within Israeli culture is widely regarded as an erasure of Palestinian culture and, as a result, of the Palestinian Arab identity as a whole, although there are Arab citizens of Israel who operate restaurants serving Palestinian cuisine.

Among the arguments put forth by Israeli culinary artists who oppose the Arab accusation of cultural appropriation is the fact that many of the disputed Middle Eastern foods of Israeli cuisine were as integral to Middle Eastern Jewish cuisines (i.e., of the Mizrahi Jews) as they were to Arab cuisines, thus qualifying them as Israeli as well, since they were popularized by Jewish migration from these lands. Israel's inclusion of Levantine cuisine is also regarded as a means of enabling other populations of the Jewish diaspora, such as Ashkenazi Jews, who saw themselves as returning to the region, to further reconnect with ancient Jewish civilization in the sense of recalling Israelite culinary traditions.

The politics of food between Arabs and Israeli Jews have also carried over globally, particularly in parts of the Western world, where some well-known modern Levantine dishes are Israeli, such as Israeli salad, which is closely related to Arab salad. The claiming of some of these foods as national dishes among Israel and the Arab countries has led to legal disputes at local and international levels, and has also served as the basis for culinary competitions between Israeli and Arab chefs. Overall, the phenomenon is ongoing as the subject of extensive debate between culinary anthropologists.

Background

Food as politics According to culinary anthropologist Yael Raviv, "David Bell and Gill Valentine, in Consuming Geographies (1997), see a certain paradox in the discussion of nation and food since the two seem 'so commingled in popular discourse that it is often difficult not to think of one through the other' ".

According to Alexander Lee, writing for History Today in 2019, "More often than not, arguments about the origins of falafel are refracted through the lens of political rivalries. Particularly for the Israelis and the Palestinians, ownership of this most distinctively Levantine dish is inexorably bound up with issues of legitimacy and national identity. By claiming falafel for themselves, they are each, in a sense, claiming the land itself – and dismissing the other as an interloper or occupier."

Between Israelis and Palestinians Particularly after the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, Jews migrated from many parts of the world, where they had many different culinary cultures; these immigrants embraced local ingredients such as olives, olive oil, lemons and lemon juice, and oranges and regionally traditional foods such as falafel and hummus, absorbing these ingredients and dishes into diasporic Jewish foodways to create an Israeli cuisine.

According to Palestinian writer Reem Kassis, food was one of the items used "to achieve a sense of Israeli nationalism". Writing about the distinction between cultural diffusion and cultural appropriation and explaining the Palestinian objection to an "Israeli cuisine" that includes Palestinian dishes, Kassis says that "presenting dishes of Palestinian provenance as 'Israeli' not only denies the Palestinian contribution to Israeli cuisine, but it erases our very history and existence." Raviv argued that "Israelis' choice of falafel and hummus as markers of identity should perhaps be perceived as a reflection of their wish to become part of the Middle East" and used the development of this cuisine and the foods themselves as unifying symbols. Traditional foods of the region were seen as "biblical" foods, the adoption of which would allow Jews who saw themselves as returning to the region of their historical roots to reconnect with the past.

Dishes

The cuisine of Israel includes Mizrahi Jewish cuisine: the cuisine of the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East, who arrived in large numbers after 1948. Many restaurants in Israel also serve Palestinian cuisine and cater to Arab citizens of Israel as well as the other citizens, who eat there together.

As well as hummus and falafel, other dishes such as ka'ak, shakshuka, labneh, knafeh, tabouleh, maftoul, za'atar, shawarma, and fallahi salad have been incorporated into Israeli cuisine, often being renamed. Some of the dishes, including hummus, falafel, msabaha, baba ghanoush, and knafeh have come to be considered national dishes in Israel; according to Palestinian cookbook author Reem Kassis, Israeli scholars Ilan Baron, Dafna Hirsch, Yonatan Mendel, and Ronald Ranta have determined that the dishes were likely learned from Palestinian cooks.

In some cases, migration of Jews was from areas where these foods were already traditional to the local food culture. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi write that hummus "is undeniably a staple of the local Palestinian population, but it was also a permanent feature on dinner tables of Aleppine Jews who have lived in Syria for millennia and then arrived in Jerusalem in the 1950s and 1960s".

Characterizations of hummus and falafel being adopted into Israeli cuisine date back to at least the 1960s; found in the commentary of Syrian sociologist Sadiq Jalal al-Azm.

Falafel

The origin of falafel is uncertain. The dish most likely originated in Egypt, possibly influenced by Indian cooking.

Arguments over the relative importance of falafel in various cuisines is an example of gastronationalism. In particular, discussion centers around the adoption of the dish into Israeli cuisine as an example of cultural appropriation. The Palestinian version of the falafel, made with chickpeas, has been adopted into Israeli cuisine, where it now features prominently and has been called a national dish of Israel – an attribution that Palestinians and other Arabs have criticized.

While according to author Claudia Roden, falafel was "never specifically a Jewish dish" in Syria and Egypt, it was consumed by Syrian and Egyptian Jews, and was adopted in the diet of early Jewish immigrants to the Jewish communities of Ottoman Syria. As it is plant-based, Jewish dietary laws classify it as pareve and thus allow it to be eaten with both meat and dairy meals.

Journalist Dorothy Kahn Bar-Adon wrote in 1941 that “since the outbreak of war domestic science institutions have been advocating the use of local products" but that there was a "wall of resistance", and that many Eastern Europeans were reluctant to use local foods. Dafna Hirsch of the Open University of Israel, wrote that despite this initial reluctance, "several ingredients from the Palestinian repertoire did penetrate many Jewish kitchens by the early 1940s, mostly vegetables like olives, tomatoes, eggplants, and squashes. Prepared dishes, however, were rarely adopted, except for falafel, which became a popular street food in Tel Aviv by the late 1930s. Excluding consumption by immigrants from Arab countries, both falafel and, later, hummus seem to have been adopted mainly by the first generation of Jews born in the country." Some authors have disagreed on the politics of food and its relative merit as a topic in the conflict.

The Association of Lebanese Industrialists in 2008 brought a lawsuit against Israel seeking damages for lost revenues, claiming copyright infringement regarding the branding of Israeli falafel, hummus, tabbouleh, and other foods.

Jennie Ebeling, writing in Review of Middle East Studies, argued that "food in general is sacred in the Middle East and falafel specifically is loaded with issues of national identity." Some Palestinians and other Arabs have objected to the identification of falafel with Israeli cuisine as amounting to cultural appropriation. Kassis wrote that the dish has become a proxy for political conflict. Joseph Massad, a Jordanian-American professor at Columbia University, has called the characterization as Israeli of falafel and other dishes of Arab origin in American and European restaurants to be part of a broader issue of appropriation by "colonizers". Israeli chef and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi told Anthony Bourdain that Israelis had "made falafel their own, and everybody in the world, and everybody in the world think falafel is an Israeli food, but in actual fact it's as much a Palestinian food, even more so".

The dish and its politico-cultural significance were the subject of a 2013 documentary by Ari A. Cohen, Falafelism: The Politics of Food in the Middle East which attempted to use falafel symbolically to argue that Arabs and Israelis had much in common, including the fact that multiple Middle Eastern cuisines consider falafel to be central to their national identity, but according to Ebeling the film was "ultimately unable to contribute more than anecdotally to issues of Israeli appropriation of Arab cuisine and cultural coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis". According to the Toronto Star, Cohen intended the film to be about "the unifying power of falafel".

In 2002, Condordia University's chapter of Hillel served falafel at an event, prompting accusations of appropriation from a pro-Palestinian student group.

Hummus

Although multiple different theories and claims of origins exist in various parts of the Middle East, evidence is insufficient to determine the precise location or time of the invention of hummus. However, the earliest known mention of hummus was in a 13th-century cookbook attributed to the Syrian historian Ibn al-Adim from present-day Syria. Its basic ingredients—chickpeas, sesame, lemon, and garlic—have been combined and eaten in Egypt and the Levant for centuries. Various academic theories argue the dish has its origins in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, or Egypt.

Hummus is claimed as a national dish by Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon in a disagreement sometimes referred to as the "hummus wars".