Ari Ariel
Food is among the best tools for unsettling static notions of identity and for humanizing others. Ironically, this is because we tend to think about food in fixed ethnic terms. The more we study foodways, however, the clearer it becomes that they are among the most hybrid of practices. This realization then helps us to question other ways we categorize foods and the peoples who eat them. For those of us interested in helping students disrupt the binaries that often plague discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict, foodways can be invaluable.
In the classroom setting, before discussing a specific dish or culinary practice, it is important to emphasize the importance of foodways to political, social, and cultural studies, lest students fall into the trap of thinking that “it’s just food.” I usually start with a few historical examples to stress this point. I remind students that Christopher Columbus set out on his famous journey looking for spices and that sugar played a fundamental role in both the transatlantic slave trade and the development of an industrial economy in Great Britain.1 I also ask students to consider Manning Nash’s definition of ethnicity. For Nash, commensality is one of three fundamental ethnic boundary markers. He defines it as “the propriety of eating together indicating a kind of equality, peership, and the promise of further kinship links stemming from the intimate acts of dinning together, only one step removed from the intimacy of bedding together.”2 The role of food in identity formation is also highlighted in scholarship in the fields of Jewish studies and Middle Eastern studies.3 Once students appreciate how important food and foodways are to understanding the world around us, we can talk about food in the context of Israel/Palestine. This essay uses one specific dish, hummus, to suggest several ways that food can be useful in teaching the conflict.
Over the past decade or so, hummus has been an important part of narratives of the conflict. This has included an ongoing competition for the Guinness world record for the largest dish of hummus in the world, a Lebanese attempt to trademark the term hummus in the European Union (EU), and calls to boycott Sabra Dipping Company made by advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS is attracting an ever-increasing amount of attention in the U.S. media, and American celebrities have often been involved in public debate about Sabra. Stephen Colbert joked during his first episode as host of The Late Show that in order to get the show, he had to swear a blood oath on a demonic amulet and “make certain regrettable compromises.” The amulet then appeared in a product placement for Sabra, one of the show’s sponsors. Soon after, in February 2016, the Palestinian American hip hop artist DJ Khaled was criticized by BDS activists for performing at a Super Bowl event sponsored by Sabra. Hummus, it seems, is becoming more and more embedded in coverage of Israel/Palestine. To many students, however, food seems apolitical. It is, therefore, a perfect entryway into the topic.
Both scholarly literature and journalistic work regularly portray the Arab-Israeli and/or Israel-Palestine conflict(s) as national. Likewise, college syllabi often frame courses on the topic in terms of two competing nationalist movements. However, for students (and for specialists too), nations and nationalisms are hard to understand. Food can help. We all, rather intuitively, categorize foods as ethnic or national: lasagna is Italian, mole is Mexican, sushi is Japanese, and so on. Of course, we sometimes debate the authenticity of a particular dish, but this matters little to the overall system, which requires that foods are linked with specific ethnic or national groups. In turn, these groups claim special rights of ownership over particular foods or dishes.
How, then, is hummus linked to group identity? Recently Lebanese chefs and businesspeople have claimed ownership of hummus in two ways: first, by making the largest dish of hummus in the world and, second, through an attempt by the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI) to trademark the term hummus in the EU.4 In order to receive the trademark, Lebanon first has to register hummus as Lebanese through one of three EU schemes designed to protect product names from misuse or imitation.5 In so doing, Lebanon would be claiming that hummus is, by definition, Lebanese. On both fronts of the hummus wars, as this conflict has been called, the Lebanese claim is aimed primarily against Israel. The trademark attempt stems from the fact that large Israeli companies dominate the hummus market. According to ALI, Israeli companies have appropriated and are selling a Lebanese dish and are therefore stealing tens of millions of dollars annually from Lebanon. When the campaign began, Fadi Abboud, the head of ALI in 2008, was also involved in an effort to break the record for the largest dish of the chickpea dip. He noted, “I thought the best way to tell the world that the hummus is Lebanese is to break the Guinness Book of Records.”6
This raises a host of questions that are productive in the classroom. Is hummus exclusively Lebanese? Might hummus also be Israeli? Why is it important for countries to claim a distinct national cuisine? Must each nation have a distinct national culture? Must this culture be recognizable to both insiders and outsiders? When is adopting a cultural practice from another group appropriation? What happens when national cultures overlap, for example, if a food is shared by several nations? And how does political conflict impact shared cultures?
While the Lebanese hummus claim is clearly part of a conflict between “Arabs” and “Jews,” it also highlights the ambivalence of national cultures, both Arab and Israeli. To trademark hummus, Lebanon must assert that hummus is exclusively Lebanese. Facebook groups linked to, or supportive of, the campaign are titled “Fight to Keep Hummus and Tabouli LEBANESE No one else’s”; “Hummus and Tabbouleh are 100% Lebanese”; “Hummus, Tabouli, Baba Ghanouj are LEBANESE NOT ISRAELI!!”; “Hummus is a LEBANESE invention (TM)”; and “Hummus is Lebanese.” Each of these groups, in its description section, notes specifically that hummus is not Israeli. However, Abboud himself has noted that hummus, along with the other dishes under dispute, is not solely Lebanese, that it might be equally Palestinian or Syrian, for example: “Hummus might be debatable, in any case we will be happy if the Palestinians win.”7 Or speaking about falafel, Abboud said, “We have a dialogue as to the subject of falafel, whether it is Lebanese, Syrian, or Palestinian, but the dispute is not between us, it’s clear that the dispute is not among the Arabs. I have no problem with falafel being Palestinian or Lebanese. I have a problem with it being Israeli.”8 The Lebanese national hummus claim is thus weakened by the unresolved tension between state nationalisms (Lebanese, Syrian, etc.) and a broader Arab nationalism. If Lebanon is a nation with a distinct culture, how are we to understand that this culture is shared by other Arab nations? Here Arab nationalism itself becomes an obstacle to the Lebanese trademark project.
At the same time, the Lebanese claim also makes a statement about Israeli identity—that Israel is European, despite the fact that Jews of European descent make up a minority of the population of the country. Even while noting that Arab Jews “eat the same food as other Arabs,” including hummus, Abboud asserts, “with all due respect, I didn’t know German Jews or Polish Jews knew anything about hummus.”9 Here Abboud is arguing that Israeli is defined by Ashkenazi/European culture, and since hummus is an Arab dish, it cannot be Israeli. But he too quickly writes off the question of Middle Eastern Jews. If Syrian Jews can become Israeli, why can hummus not become Israeli too? How does a dish move from one group or culture to another? Are pathways important? That is, does the question of hummus as Israeli depend on whether the dish entered Israeli-Jewish culinary culture with Middle Eastern Jews or was taken from Palestinian cuisine?
On the Israeli side, the hummus wars underscore a tension between Jewishness and Israeliness. The 2010 Israeli Guinness record (later bested by a Lebanese team) was set not by an Israeli Jew but by Palestinian Israeli chefs in the town of Abu Ghosh. Commenting on the record, the celebrity chef Haim Cohen noted, “It’s funny because it’s not the Israelis in Israel that are doing the hummus, it’s the Arabs, the Israeli Arabs that are doing the hummus.”10 Again, this raises numerous questions that will provoke classroom discussion: How is Israeli identity linked to Jewishness? Can a non-Jew be Israeli? What is the distinction between citizenship and nationality? What is the relationship between Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel to the state? To national ideology? If Arab citizens are Israeli, can hummus, an Arab dish, be Israeli?
BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, and its activists and supporters call for a boycott of Israel until the country complies “with international law and Palestinian rights.” As part of this general call to boycott Israeli products, there has been a call to boycott Sabra hummus, primarily in food cooperatives and on college campuses. In food co-ops, the movement’s success has been limited. In 2010, the Olympia Food Co-op in Washington State became the first to vote in favor of boycotting Israeli products. Soon after, several members of the co-op filed a lawsuit against it, claiming that board members enacted the boycott in violation of co-op policy. As of August 2016, the case is still making its way through the court system. In 2012, members of the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn voted down a referendum to join the BDS movement and to stop selling Sabra products. In 2015, the board of directors of the GreenStar co-op in Ithaca, New York, rejected a similar referendum before it came to a vote because according to New York State human rights law, it is unlawful to “discriminate against, boycott or blacklist, or to refuse to buy from, sell to or trade with, any person, because of the race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, military status or sex of such person.”11 Anti-BDS activists are now trying to block boycotts in the courts. In June 2015, when President Obama signed the Trade Promotion Authority legislation into law, it included a provision making it one of the “principal negotiating objectives of the United States” to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel.”12
On college campuses, the BDS movement has had more success, winning student divestment votes in several University of California schools, the University of New Mexico, and others. Boycotting Sabra has proved more difficult. At DePaul, Wesleyan, and UC Riverside, Sabra hummus was briefly removed from shelves but was then restocked along with an alternative brand so that consumers would have two choices. Vassar College Campus Dining decided to do the same.
In September 2015, I gave a talk at Boston University titled “Hummus Wars: Buying and Boycotting Middle Eastern Foods.” About a month before the talk, in response to an advertisement listing that title and a brief description, I received an email from a member of the public, stating, “Before I commit [to attending] I need to ask a necessary question in todays [sic] antisemitic BDS environment. . . . The word ‘boycott’ appears in the text of the explanation. . . . Please tell me this is not a BDS talk in regards to Hummus. . . . I have had enough exposure to this antisemitic anti-Israel tactic as we have recently seen in Spain. If it is about Hummus and our similiar [sic] cultural beliefs that unite us then great.” Neither the title not the description suggested that I was taking any position on the boycott.13 The responder seems to suggest that mere mention of boycott, in even the most general terms, is tantamount to a declaration of antisemitism. In my opinion, declaring contentious topics off-limits is antithetical to the intellectual environment that we should create on college campuses and does a great disservice to our students.
Not only does the BDS movement’s call to boycott Sabra raise interesting questions about dealing with contentious topics in the classroom; it also provides an opportunity to discuss political activism on college campuses and in U.S. society at large. Moreover, BDS is frequently in the media, and it is preposterous to ignore this topic in courses on Israel/Palestine. Hummus is a productive way to talk about boycott through a product that most students know.
Wherever one stands on the issue of BDS, the Sabra case raises important questions about political activism and the United States–Israel relationship. What kind of political action should be encouraged/discouraged on college campuses? Under what circumstances is boycott a legitimate political tool? Why have New York State and U.S. legislatures taken steps to make BDS illegal? Is this legislation, perhaps, unconstitutional? Does it matter where “Israeli” products are made? The GreenStar co-op referendum suggested a possible distinction between goods produced in Israel and those from the West Bank. How do we determine the national identity of a corporation? Sabra was founded in New York in 1986 and has always sold its products on the U.S. market. In 2005, the Israeli food manufacturer Strauss acquired 51 percent of the company. Then in 2007, Pepsico acquired 50 percent. It is now a joint venture between Pepsico and Strauss. The company is based in Queens, New York, and Virginia. So it might be fair to ask if Sabra is Israeli at all. BDS activists target Sabra because they say it supports the Israeli army, but Sabra itself does not appear to contribute anything to the Israel Defense Forces. On the other hand, Strauss does support soldiers in the IDF. According to the company’s website, it provides funds “for welfare, cultural and educational activities, such as pocket money for underprivileged soldiers, sports and recreational equipment, care packages, and books and games for the soldiers’ club.”14 If this support is primarily for soldiers’ personal benefit, is that the same as support for Israeli military policies? Where should the line between the two be drawn?
Together, the hummus wars and the Sabra BDS campaign raise questions about nationalism and conflict, cultural appropriation, political activism on college campuses, freedom of speech, boycott and economic partnerships, and the U.S.-Israeli relationship, just to name a few. Certainly you could raise these issues in other ways. However, my goal in this essay was to demonstrate that a seemingly banal dish of pureed chickpeas can provide multiple entry points into the study of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many other foods can be used to teach the conflict or Israeli history and society. Falafel has long been a contentious topic, as has anything labeled “Israeli.” Is Israeli couscous really maftul or moghrabieh? Is Israeli salad Arab salad? Or why not use amba to teach Jewish history in Iraq or shakshuka to talk about North African Jews in Israel? Make food part of your students’ “hunger” for knowledge!
1. Gary Paul Nabhan, Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014); Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin Books, 1986).
2. Manning Nash, The Cauldron of Ethnicity in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 11.
3. For two recent examples, see Nefissa Naguib, Nurturing Masculinities: Men, Food, and Family in Contemporary Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015); and Yael Raviv, Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).
4. For a more detailed account of the hummus wars, see Ari Ariel, “The Hummus Wars,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 12, no. 1 (2012): 34–42.
5. For more on the EU schemes, see European Commission, “EU Quality Logos,” accessed August 17, 2018, http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/quality/schemes/index_en.htm
6. “Give Chickpeas a Chance: Why Hummus Unites, and Divides, the Mideast,” NPR, July 18, 2016, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/18/483715410/give-chickpeas-a-chance-why-hummus-unites-and-divides-the-mideast.
7. “Hummus War Looms between Lebanon, Israel,” USA Today, October 7, 2008, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-07-lebanon-israel_N.htm.
8. “Israel and Lebanese Foods . . . Attack on Heritage” Al Jazeera, October 8, 2008.
9. Ibid.; Carolynne Wheeler, “Hummus Food Fight between Lebanon and Israel,” Telegraph, October 11, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/3178040/Hummus-food-fight-between-Lebanon-and-Israel.html.
10. “Haim Cohen on the New Israeli Cuisine, Interview by Joan Nathan, March 24, 2010.” This video was part of an online seminar given by the New York Times Knowledge Network and the Israeli Consulate in New York, titled The New Israel Cuisine.
11. New York State, “New York State Human Rights Law,” accessed August 17, 2018, www.dhr.ny.gov/law; emphasis added.
12. S. 995, 114th Congress (2015–16), available at www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/995/text.
13. The advertisement described the talk as follows: “Focusing on the Guinness World Record for the largest serving of hummus, as well as attempts to trademark hummus and calls for its boycott, this talk will use food to highlight questions of ethnic and national identity, examining food as an arena of conflict and coexistence.”
14. Ron Friedman, “Strauss Reposts IDF-Support Commitment on Website,” Jerusalem Post, December 14, 2010, www.jpost.com/Defense/Strauss-reposts-IDF-support-commitment-on-website.