User:Valereee/Politicization of Middle Eastern food

Foods such as falafel and hummus, which originated in the Middle East, have been used as political symbols as part of a general gastronationalistic movement in the region that uses food and national culinary identity to make accusations of colonization of Arab culture and cultural appropriation by Israel.

Background
After the creation 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.

Israel consciously used food and cuisine to develop a sense of nationalism and national identity within a community composed of immigrants from multiple cultures. Culinary anthropologist Yael 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.

As well as hummus and falafel, other dishes such as ka'ak, shakshuka, labneh, knafeh, tabouleh, maftoul, za'atar, and fallahi salad have been incorporated into Israeli cuisine, often being renamed. In Israeli cuisine, maftoul is called Israeli couscous, and fallahi salad is called Israeli salad. 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 case migration of Jews was from areas where these foods were already traditional to the local food culture.

Politicization
Over time, Israeli embrace of foods traditional to Middle East cuisine, and particularly those of Arab culture, was seen by many Palestinians and other Arabs as cultural appropriation. Kassis argues the concept of an Israeli cuisine that includes traditional Palestinian foods without acknowledging the foods' origins is an attempt to "[erase Palestinians'] very history and existence".

Kassis noted that Israeli cookbooks and restaurant menus commonly name dishes borrowed from other cuisines, such as calling a dish of schug "Yemeni schug” or one of sabich “Iraqi sabich” but typically don't use Palestinian the same way, possibly because the term Palestinian is "considered by many Israelis as a threat to their existence". She argued that "Food for Palestinians becomes a way to reclaim our country, if not geographically, at least psychologically and emotionally", adding "That’s why referencing traditional dishes adopted from Palestinians as Israeli without regard to their origin is seen as adding insult to injury: First the land, now the food and culture?"

Two dishes in particular, falafel and hummus, were embraced by Israel as markers of national identity. According to Raviv, "political conflict is an unavoidable part of the discussion of Zionist history, even food". Both dishes are commonly served at Jewish social gatherings outside of Israel.

Falafel
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-cutural significance were the subject of a 2013 documentary by Ari 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
Hummus is claimed as a national dish by Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon in a disagreement sometimes referred to as the "hummus wars". After Sabra, a US food company, created a marketing event using hummus, the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI) created "Hands Off Our Dishes", a campaign claiming hummus as Lebanese and objecting to Sabra's marketing of the dish as Israeli. Fadi Abboud, then president of ALI and later tourism minister for Lebanon, threatened legal action against Israel for marketing hummus and other commercial food products as Israeli. Abboud characterized the hummus wars as being not about just hummus but about "the organized theft carried out by Israel" in connection to the culture of the entire Arab region.