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, and
fallahi salad have been incorporated into Israeli cuisine, often being renamed.
Falafel , part of the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, 2007 The origin of falafel is uncertain. 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. 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, 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. 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". 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". In 2002,
Condordia University's chapter of
Hillel served falafel at an event, prompting accusations of appropriation from a pro-Palestinian student group.
Hummus at a Palestinian restaurant in
East Jerusalem, part of the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, 2011 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. in a disagreement sometimes referred to as the "hummus wars". Hummus is often seen as an unofficial "national dish" of Israel, reflecting its huge popularity and significance among the entire Israeli population, which Israel's critics describe as an
appropriation of Lebanese, According to Ofra Tene and Dafna Hirsch, the dispute over ownership of hummus, exposes
nationalism through food and the important role played by the industrialization of hummus made by Israeli private companies in 1958. Although hummus has traditionally been part of the
cuisine of the Mizrahi Jews who lived in
Arabic-speaking lands, the dish was also popularized among the Jewish immigrants from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. Historian Dafna Hirsch describes its adoption in their diet as part of an attempt of blending in the Middle Eastern environment, while sociologist Rafi Grosglick points out the importance of its health aspects to their diet. In recent years, through a process of gourmetization, the
Arab identity of hummus became a marker of its authenticity, making famous
Arab-Israeli villages such as
Abu Gosh and
Kafr Yasif. Hence, enthusiasts travel to the more remote Arab and
Druze villages in the northern Galilee region in search of culinary experiences. After
Sabra, a US food company, created a marketing event using hummus, , the Lebanese Industrialists Association was still "collecting documents and proof" to support its claim. The 2005 short film
West Bank Story features a rivalry between two fictional restaurants, the Israeli "Kosher King" and the Palestinian "Hummus Hut". A
parody of
West Side Story, the film won the 2006
Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. In 2012, Australian filmmaker Trevor Graham released a documentary,
Make Hummus Not War, on the political and gastronomic aspects of hummus. Lebanon and Israel's chefs have been engaged in a competition over the largest dish of hummus, as validated by the
Guinness World Record, as a form of contestation of "ownership". The "title" has gone back and forth between Israel (2008), Lebanon (2009), Israel (January 2010), and, , Lebanon (May 2010). The winning dish, cooked by 300 cooks in the village of al-Fanar, near
Beirut, weighed approximately , more than double the weight of the Israeli-Arab previous record. According to local media, the recipe included eight tons of boiled chick peas, two
tonnes of tahini, two tonnes of lemon juice, and of olive oil. Even though
ḥomeṣ is translated as in the 1989
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) (), as in the 1917
Jewish Publication Society of America Version () as well as the 1985
New Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh, and means in
modern Hebrew, Shalev traces
ḥomeṣ and
ḥummuṣ as well as
ḥimṣa "chickpea" to one Semitic root
ḥ-m-ṣ and claims that chickpeas are named thus in Hebrew owing to their rapid fermentation. Moreover, linguists Pelio Fronzaroli (1971) and Leonid Kogan (2011) reconstruct
Proto-Semitic root for Hebrew ,
Arabic and
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic .
Israeli salad Israeli salad is a dish that was adopted by
Jewish immigrants to the Levant in the late 19th century. It is akin to the popular
Arab salad made with the locally grown
Kirby cucumbers and
tomatoes. In an interview with the
BBC, Israeli culinary journalist
Gil Hovav said that the Israeli salad is in fact a Palestinian Arab salad. The idea that what is known in New York delis as "Israeli salad" stems from a Palestinian rural salad is agreed on by
Joseph Massad, a Palestinian professor of Arab Politics at
Columbia University, as an example of the appropriation of Palestinian and Syrian foods such as
hummus,
falafel, and
tabbouleh by Israel as "national dishes".
Israeli couscous Israeli couscous, which is called ptitim in Israel, is a type of extruded and toasted pasta consciously created as a poverty food in 1953 at the behest of then prime minister
David Ben-Gurion during the
austerity period in Israel. It is sometimes called "Ben-Gurion rice" or pearl couscous.
Joseph Massad objected to the term Israeli couscous and called it an example of how food in the Middle East had become "a target of colonial conquest", but
Haaretz called the dish one of the few foods in Israeli cuisine that had not been incorporated from other cuisines, and it and
bamba "more or less the only unique culinary contribution Israel has made to the world". The airline faced calls for boycotts and accusations of having been influenced by the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement over the naming. Following the criticism, Virgin Atlantic apologized for causing offence and complied with complaints from Pro-Israel users and then renamed the item to "Couscous Salad", which prompted backlash from Pro-Palestinian social media users. == Characterization as appropriation ==