Steven Salaita believes that the Israeli taste for hummus is worse than cultural appropriation and actually amounts to theft. “The pilfer of Palestinian food,” he wrote, “illustrates that we shouldn't reduce the issue to individual consumption. It's a systematic effort to validate settler colonisation.” In fact, “It's a project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide.” (British spelling original.)
Salaita is known for his cranky extremism, but the same claim has been made by people as reasonable and mainstream as James Zogby, a prominent intellectual and a member of the Democratic National Committee, who objected on Twitter when Rachel Ray referred to Israeli hummus: "Damn it! This is cultural genocide. It's not Israeli food. It's Arab (Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, etc). First, the Israelis take the land and ethnically cleanse it of Arabs. Now they take their food and culture and claim it's theirs too! Shame."
The latest battle in the hummus war was joined at Swarthmore College, where the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine circulated a petition demanding the removal of Sabra hummus from campus dining halls. Sabra is jointly owned by Pepsico and the Strauss Group, the latter being an Israel’s largest food company. Thus, according to SJP, “The campaign to boycott Sabra at Swarthmore is situated within a broader international movement to hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses.”
The Swarthmore administration responded judiciously. Declining to ban Sabra products from campus, President Valerie Smith announced that “the College will continue to offer Sabra hummus [and] will provide an alternative hummus brand on campus as well.
Thus, Swarthmore avoids entanglement in the Middle East while offering two hummuses for two people.
In other words, a two plate solution.
[Note: I have not been able to determine whether Swarthmore will offer an alternative to Sabra guacamole, which was also a target of the SJP boycott demand. As far as I know, neither Steven Salaita nor James Zogby have weighed in on this issue.]
Absurd. What bothers need is the bds bever bothers with anyone else even assuming arguendo that in the context of Isreal there is merit for bds (which in truth is absent). Why not boycott China, Russia, India, etc? Selectively choosing one country is revealing to their real intent. And Isreal has every right to defend itself.
Oh dear me.
All around the mediterranean you find these disputes. Where was Pizza invented (answer, probably not Naples – pizza in some form had been made all around the Mediterranean for centuries, the Naples version may have been one of the earlier to add tomatoes), Paella (want to get a Spaniard narked, repeat Valencia's claim to Paella – it too was eaten all around the coast of Spain and probably into north Africa), Hummus literally comes from the Arabic word for chickpeas, and there is evidence that suggest that it was eaten widely around the Mediterranean all the way back to Egyptian times, and almost certainly in the region from roughly Greece all the way to Morocco in some form for perhaps millennia. Was it particularly popular in the Levant – maybe, but even before the establishment of Israel there was a considerable Jewish population in the same regions as those where hummus in some form was widely eaten.
Now if you really want to have trouble – ask for a recipe for Bolognese in Bolgna from a group of unrelated people … it will decay into potentially violent argument over the ingredients in about 5 minutes, I suspect hummus recipes may go the same way … in Ireland Colcannon can cause massive disputes between the Kale supporters and the Cabbage….and now the Turks apparently invented Swedish Meatballs (but I bet Ikea's are not halal….at least not in most places)
Once you start into the debate as to who owns what cuisine, you are on a hiding to nowhere. Can we all just agree that Haggis should be listed as weapon and banned….
Personally, I can, and do, dismiss the "arguments" in the first two paragraphs that this amounts to cultural appropriation and/or cultural genocide, while fully endorsing the reasons proffered by students at Swarthmore College (the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine) for boycotting Sabra products on their campus, as one small part of the larger BDS campaign.
And those nasty Austrian imperialists stole cotoletta Milanese and renamed it Wiener Schnitzel. And the Irish stole the potato from the Peruvians and the Indians stole chiles from the American natives, and the Thais stole peanuts from them for sati, and..and and so on. What a load of nonsense (or a 4 letter word meaning the same thing).
Haggis does not actually exist in nature and it is no accident that it is accompanied with large quantities of whiskey so you cannot remember into being tricked into believing you actually ate something that unnatural.
I should also add that I hope one can at the same time dismiss the arguments about cultural appropriation and cultural genocide in this case but still appreciate the need for a moral, political and legal concept of cultural genocide. Two fine examples of efforts in this direction are found in Larry May's Genocide: A Normative Account (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Lawrence Davidson's Cultural Genocide (Rutgers University Press, 2012). The latter, after outlining the theoretical warrant or justification for the notion cultural genocide, provides four case studies to assess its relevance: "Cultural Genocide and the American Indians;" "Russia and the Jews in the Nineteenth Century;" "Israel and Palestinian Cultural Genocide;" and "The Chinese Assimilation of Tibet."
Re the hummus issue, I'm sorry to see an ostensibly serious recreation of one of the funnier bits from "Curb Your Enthusiasm." I also remember my wife getting some looks when she ordered a "Turkish" coffee in a Greek restaurant. Finally, I'm going to say for the record that I actually like haggis.
If you really want to talk about food and cultural "theft" look no further than Lender's bagels made in rural Central Illinois. Those things aren't even bagels.
Regarding Israel. If the Palestinians were to unilaterally lay down their weapons and declare peace, what do you think would happen? Peace.
If Israel were to unilaterally lay down their weapons and declare peace, what do you think would happen?
@jeff –
I'll bet you like Drisín (Drisheen) & Tripe (or Packet & Tripe) too, or come to think of it andouillette XXXXX, i.e., andouillette de troyes – aka 'the dish of death.' Be warned in France andouille are very different from anywhere else in the world.
Indeed as an example of cultural appropriation, the taking of andouille without the actual recipe or ingredients is something special, but not a bad idea.It was a while before I realised that outside France andouille were not horrifying.
Do they serve Mexican food at Cracker Barrel? Applebees? Why is this an argument? These students have too much time on their hands. This is precisely why colleges have a reputation as being snow flakeish. I will bet this schools have "safe spaces and the like.
We, and i include myself, make jokes about food appropriation and with some good reason. Sitting beneath the jokes is the suggestion that somehow there is a culture that is so pristine that it never assimilated aspects of another culture for better or worse. Of course, this is empirically silly as people have been exchanging everything be it in a potlatch society or through conquest. But we should ask what else is going on here. Why are some people angry when other folks appropriate some aspect of their culture and makes gobs of money in the process. A classic example is Pat Boone singing R & B and making serious money when Chicago based blues bands were playing for $25 a night. To suggest that white folks cannot sing r & b is different as a matter of principle than the political economy of the music business which rewarded white folks but not blacks. Deep State Special Legal Counsel suggests that students have too much time on their hands, demand safe spaces and are snow flakiest. But wait, maybe they are beginning a long process of analyzing global inequalities and seeking concrete and local examples. I personally think that Hummus is a silly place to begin since as far as we know it was first reported in Cairo in the 13th c. and Cairo had Jews and Arabs living there so we cannot verify whether it was Mahmood, Moshe, or Miriam or Maryam or all of the above who created the recipe. And while i buy my hummus at the Pita Inn which is owned by Arabs i do it because it is locally owned and frankly, the best. (Those are my principles). So with regard to the students, i would rather not make ad hominem dismissals and think about how first steps in education are often characterized by more bluntness and less nuance. Students are working hard at my University to make sense of their own marginalization and we should help them get better at it.
Jeff
You are responding to a comment by a rank provocateur who likely will take any response as an excuse to stink it up even more.
It seems to me to be plain that the comment was not intended to be serious, or seriously considered. This person apparently comments on nearly every post for the sole purpose of making rude, droll and often offensive and pathetic statements, seemingly in hopes to either provoke others or cause others to simply turn away.
Think about the first two sentences? Do these make any sense in this context?
In other words, a troll.
^^^^anon
You're just upset the concession stand at the NRA convention didn't sell Hummus. You are projecting here.
Last comment:
“^^^^anon You're just upset the concession stand at the NRA convention didn't sell Hummus. You are projecting here. Posted by: Athletic Second Amendment Supporter | May 06, 2018 at 07:00 PM”
Notice the weird “^^^^” thing? Who does that? Sy, Carswell, Deep State?
Hmmmm
“Yes.^^^^^Subpoena Duces Tecum—PEE PEE TAPE!!! (Legal Spin on Colbert) Putting my JD to good use here. Posted by: Deep State Special Legal Counsel | April 24, 2018 at 04:11 PM”
“^^^For the sake of comity bi- partisanship, impartiality and academic civility on this blog, I will put in a plug for the Starr Report, especially the cigar story. PEE PEE TAPE and CIGAR There now. Posted by: Deep State Special Legal Counsel | April 24, 2018 at 07:08 PM”
“^^^^Good point. So, the issue is, does the First Amendment protect lying, cheating, dishonest, mendacious Speech intended to persuade low information, uncritical grievance voters to cast a ballot a certain way? Posted by: Deep State Special Legal Counsel | February 20, 2018 at 07:49 PM”
Anyone aware of any examples of this weird ^^^ introduction to others' comments?
Have SJP members and fellow travelers deleted Waze from their devices? And they should also be making sure that none of their electronic devices include any technology developed in Israel. They should also check how their food was grown to make sure the farmers didn't use drip irrigation and for those in California, they should make sure they are definitely not benefiting – directly OR indirectly – from the desalinization plant built by an Israeli company.
^^^^Agreed. Let me add, when was the last time Israel blew up an airliner or shot up a pizza joint filled with kids because of some grievance? Imagine if Canada were to blow up a Chucky Cheese here in the US. What do you think would happen? I think the folks calling me a troll on this website maybe part of the BDS crowd.
Oh Steve. Deleting certain comments, while allowing others to remain, is sort of a big tell.
" I think the folks calling me a troll on this website maybe part of the BDS crowd."
Ok with you, right? The response that was deleted:
You are a troll.
Toll? I have EZ PASS.