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Hugh Fitzgerald: Food Fight: “A Brutal Attack Against the Palestinian Heritage”
The Geller Report ^ | 11/24./15 | Pamela Geller

Posted on 11/24/2018 10:34:49 AM PST by Impala64ssa

The “Palestinians” are up in arms, not for the first time, over what they see as Israel’s “theft” of what they claim are quintessentially “Palestinian” foods — hummus and falafel. This is one more way to continue the narrative of Israel as a foreign body, stealing not just “Palestinian” land, but also stealing “Palestinian” culture, including its clothing, its keffiyeh, and its food.

Here’s the latest complaint by a Palestine Authority spokesman:

Official Palestinian Authority television recently accused Israel of stealing falafel, hummus, and other “Palestinian foods” as part of a conspiracy against “Palestinian heritage.”

The claim was made by a reporter for the PA television channel’s show Palestine This Morning on October 3, 2018 as part of a report on a local food festival, translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

“We are talking about a brutal attack against the Palestinian heritage in general, including Palestinian foods,” the reporter claimed over images of a cook preparing various dishes.

“There has been theft of the Palestinian falafel, the Palestinian hummus, and some popular foods by the occupation,” she added.

“Holding [food] festivals like these is essential in order to preserve the heritage and also the Palestinian foods,” the reporter said.

Falafel and hummus are, in fact, generic Middle Eastern foods and are eaten by many peoples across the region and beyond. They have also become popular as delicacies in Western countries.

PMW [Palestine Media Watch] noted that the incident is by no means the first time such accusations against Israel have been made. Mohammad Shtayyeh, a central committee member of the Fatah party, once claimed Israel “fabricated the falafel.” A member of the PA Parliament has also made a similar accusation, saying the Jewish state “falsified the falafel ball.” In 2011, Palestinian columnist Muwaffaq Matar charged that Israel had “stolen our clothing, our keffiyeh, our falafel, and our hummus.”

There are several things wrong with this claim. First, no one knows for sure where falafel originated, but it certainly was not with the “Palestinians.” Most food historians believe it was first prepared in Egypt in 1000 A.D., and what’s more, its first preparers are believed to have been Coptic Christians. As Alexandria is a port city, it would have been easy for falafel to have migrated to the Levant, taken by sailors who brought the dish with them. Some maintain that falafel may have originated in Egypt as early as Pharaonic times. Another theory is that falafel may have originated in India, which has many deep-fried dishes in its cuisine, and was brought back to the Middle East by Arabs or Turks. Still another theory claims that falafel originated in Yemen. But no one has ever mentioned the “Palestinians” — that is, the handful of Arabs living in Palestine — as the originators of falafel, save the “Palestinians” themselves. And Jews in Israel did not have to “steal” falafel from the “Palestinians.” Mizrahi Jews had been eating falafel and hummus for many centuries, and when they arrived in Israel as refugees from Arab lands, they naturally brought the dish with them.

It is the same with hummus, which the “Palestinians” claim as their own, and accuse Israel of “stealing” it. Hummus, like falafel, is eaten all over the Middle East and North Africa, by Christians and Jews as well as Muslims, and by non-Arabs (Kurds, Berbers,Persians) as well as by Arabs. The dish is first mentioned in Egypt in the 13th century, which is most likely where it originated. It certainly did not originate with the “Palestinian people” who were created, for propaganda purposes, after the Six-Day War.

Why are the “Palestinians” making such a big deal about Israel “stealing” hummus and falafel from them? They have created for themselves a whole narrative to buttress the claim of a separate “Palestinian people.” They have “Palestinian folk songs,” which turn out to be songs shared by all the Arabs of the Levant. They dance the dabke, and carefully call this circle-and-line dance, again common to all the Arabs in the Levant, a “Palestinian folk dance.” And they call falafel and hummus, two dishes that are eaten all over the Middle East, that have long been eaten by Mizrahi Jews and Coptic Christians, with the weight of authority supporting the claim that both originated in Egypt, “Palestinian” foods “stolen” by Israel. Of course, the Israelis did not “steal” anything. Mizrahi Jews have been eating hummus and falafel for more than half-a-millennium, centuries before the invention of the “Palestinian” people. Nor do the Jews of Israel claim these dishes as their own; they forthrightly recognize them as part of “Middle Eastern” or even of “Arab” cuisine. But the Jews of Israel have their own distinctive religion, language, folklore, and even two separate “cuisines” — that of the Middle Eastern Mizrahis, and that of the East European Ashkenazis. Unlike the “Palestinians,” the Jews of Israel have no need to fabricate an identity; it’s already theirs.

It is the “Palestinians” who, in fact, are “stealing” from their fellow Arabs, by claiming hummus and falafel as distinctively their own, and thus part of “Palestinian” identity. It would be amusing to see the reaction of their fellow Arabs –Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians –to the claim that hummus and falafel are “Palestinian” dishes.

As for the further claim that Israel “steals” “Palestinian” clothing, including the keffiyeh, there is no evidence of this “theft” among ordinary Israelis. Nor is there any evidence of “Palestinian” clothing being distinct from that of the Jordanian or Syrian Arabs. Many “Palestinians” dress like tens of millions of other Arabs in the Levant, but their online propaganda is careful to describe this clothing as “Palestinian.” Other “Palestinians,” of course, such as Mahmoud Abbas, have completely abandoned traditional Arab dress and adopted Western clothing. The Israelis have not accused Abbas of “stealing Israeli clothing,” but it might be instructive, in a two-can-play-this-game sort of way, to do so. A way to make fun of their hysterical claim about the “brutal attack [by Israel] against the Palestinian heritage in general.”

But we cannot end this discussion without admitting that there is one task which requires a few select Israeli Jews to wear both “Palestinian” clothes and the keffiyeh, though only most temporarily, and out of real necessity. I am referring to the borrowing (not “theft’) of “Palestinian” clothing and keffiyeh by those tremendously talented Arabic-speaking Jews who conduct undercover operations in the West Bank, and need to dress accordingly.


TOPICS: Food; History; Humor
KEYWORDS: jewishpinglist; palis; pamelageller; wot
The Palis should just CHILL OUT and be more like this young man:

BTW, just imagine the nuclear grade meltowns the SJW's would have if any of these ads were seen on the the old restored trains in the subway museum in Brooklyn. The reactions be even worse than the cigarette ads they used to post.
1 posted on 11/24/2018 10:34:49 AM PST by Impala64ssa
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To: Impala64ssa

I’m trying real hard to think why I should give a...fig about the Palis.

Nope - just don’t care.


2 posted on 11/24/2018 10:37:55 AM PST by ASOC (Having humility really means one is rarely humiliated)
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To: Impala64ssa

Wonderful. The first article I check suggests hummus might be Greek in origin or might well come from ancient Egypt. Well, Arafat was Egyptian.


3 posted on 11/24/2018 10:44:50 AM PST by jimfree (My18 y/o granddaughter continues to have more quality exec experience than an 8 year Obama.)
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To: Impala64ssa

Did the fake palestinians give up electricity, indoor plumbing and the microchip so as not to culture appropriate from others?


4 posted on 11/24/2018 10:46:37 AM PST by 2banana (Were you)
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To: 2banana

Oh no when it comes to counter examples they are dismissed. It’s always a one way street for the left and muslims..


5 posted on 11/24/2018 10:55:44 AM PST by xp38
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To: 2banana

I knew someone who restored a Wyllis-Jeep from WW2, complete with the original Army issue Motorola radio. He’s a bit of a WW2 historian and told me during the war Motorla helped lay the groundwork for the cell phone technology we have today. That technology was improved upon a few years later in Israel, before Phillips, Ericsson, and eventually the Japanese made further improvements eventually making cell phones technically and economically feasible. Perhaps the Palis should think about that next time they try to look badass while take selfies, or using their Androids to trigger bombs.


6 posted on 11/24/2018 10:59:25 AM PST by Impala64ssa
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To: Impala64ssa

The Fakestinians need to be returned to their own Muslim-conquered countries, or they will eventually force Jerusalem’s hand with all their terrorist murder attacks...


7 posted on 11/24/2018 11:01:08 AM PST by faithhopecharity ("Politicians aren't born, they're excreted." -Marcus Tillius Cicero (3 BCE))
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To: Impala64ssa

it’s all Greek to me.


8 posted on 11/24/2018 11:15:07 AM PST by teeman8r (Armageddon won't be pretty, but it's not like it's the end of the world.)
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To: Impala64ssa

Several words are out of place...

The Palestinian Heritage is one brutal attack after another.


9 posted on 11/24/2018 11:23:09 AM PST by gov_bean_ counter (Ruth Bader Ginsburg doctor is a taxidermist.)
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To: Impala64ssa

Several words are out of place...

The Palestinian Heritage is one brutal attack after another.


10 posted on 11/24/2018 11:24:10 AM PST by gov_bean_ counter (Ruth Bader Ginsburg doctor is a taxidermist.)
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To: Impala64ssa

If I remember my history, after the fall of Baghdad to US forces, ice salesmen and Hummus sellers were being murdered on the streets because ICE and HUMMUS were foods that Mohammed did not have, therefore were UN-ISLAMIC.


11 posted on 11/24/2018 11:49:13 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Impala64ssa

the Fakestinian “heritage” — murdering, bombing, terrorizing, raping, pillaging, Occupying and trying to steal Israel’s territories....

Satan will be proud.... falafel or not


12 posted on 11/24/2018 12:14:45 PM PST by faithhopecharity ("Politicians aren't born, they're excreted." -Marcus Tillius Cicero (3 BCE))
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To: jimfree

I hate hummus. Looks interesting, but tastes nasty as far as I am concerned. 8>)


13 posted on 11/24/2018 2:33:09 PM PST by Robert DeLong
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To: ASOC
There is no such racial group known as “Palestinian’’. Never was, never is now and never will be. “Palestinians' are ethnic Jourdain's.
14 posted on 11/24/2018 10:38:17 PM PST by jmacusa (Made it Ma, top of the world!'')
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