Anthony Bourdain knows it and we know it too: Foodways street foods and all are endlessly bound up in politics.
The clip above is an amazingly interesting Al-Jazeera special on street food in Jerusalem. The main, million dollar question… Is the Israeli love for falafel and hummus simply an appreciation of good food or a colonialist tactic that negates the identity of the Palestinian Arabs?
I can’t say, but Israeli blog Jerusalmite has an interesting take on it:
“Given their basketful of legitimate and more pressing grievances, the depth of the Palestinian obsession with Israelis’ purported appropriation of their national cuisine hinted at in the report is odd - especially since most of the cuisine in question is not originally Palestinian, or even Arab. Hummus is a pan-Mediterranean dish whose origins predate recorded history, cropping up in some form wherever chickpeas thrive (after all, the idea of mashing and seasoning chickpeas is not particularly complex). Shawarma is Turkish, adopted by Arabs during the long years of Ottoman control over the Arab world. Fuul is pre-Arab Egyptian, and the traditional method for its preparation (burying in a clay pot over hot coals) is described in the Talmud Yerushalmi, composed before the arrival of any great number of Arabic-speaking Semites in the Levant. Falafel is also pre-Arab Egyptian, called ta’amiya (and made from favas rather than chickpeas) in northern Africa and present in various forms from Sudan to Yemen to Lebanon.
That isn’t to say these dishes are not essential components of modern Palestinian cuisine, but rather that food in the Middle East and Levant, long the crossroads of civilization, has always been defined by combination, adaptation, appropriation and migration, and rare is the dish that can be wholly claimed by any one regional ethnic group. Dishes that can be, dishes that are Palestinian in origin - musakhan, maqluba, knafeh - have never been claimed by Israeli Jews, and aside from the signature maqluba at Moshe Basson’s Eucalyptus, one would be hard pressed to find them served in non-Arab-owned restaurants in the country. The refrain of Dan Almagor’s famous Israeli folk song, after all, is “and we have falafel,” not “and we have kibbeh nayyeh.”
In any case, cuisine transcends cultures and borders. Americans gave new life to Italian pizza. The Chilean perro completo is an epic riff on German sausage. Our British friends took Indian roast chicken and created chicken tikka masala. That’s why here in Israel, one can stuff pita bread (Arab) with chicken schnitzel (German), harissa sauce (Maghrebi) and french fries (American!), all I can say is: right on.
