The State of the Jews

Here’s a hint: when completely unrelated aspects of his life, such as what he’s having for lunch, is understood as a struggle against the Zionist entity.

Case in point: Lebanon’s industrialists are still trying to deny Israelis the right to claim humus as an Israeli food.

“Lebanon is trying to win a battle against Israel by registering this new Guinness World Record and telling the whole world that hummus is a Lebanese product, its part of our traditions,” said Fady Jreissati, vice president of operations at International Fairs and Promotions group, the event’s organizer.

The event is the cooking of the world’s largest humus bowl – 2,056 kilos of the stuff. According to organizers, the previous record was held by Israel, though “It was not clear what the former Israeli record was, and organizers gave conflicting reports on when it was made.”

About this time last year, the Lebanese Industrialists Association began preparing a lawsuit against Israel for “stealing” Lebanon’s most famous cuisine – not actual humus, mind you, but the Lebanese menu, the recipes.

The president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, Fadi Abboud, accuses Israel of “stealing” its northern neighbor’s cuisine by marketing dishes such as humous – found across the Middle East – as its own.

Abboud says that while Lebanon is partly to blame because it has never registered its main food trademarks, Israel’s adoption of these dishes causes it major losses.

The Jerusalem Post quoted an Israeli Arab humus seller agreeing wholeheartedly with the Lebanese move:

“It is the right thing to do. The Israeli people are taking a product that does not officially belong to them. It originates among the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese people,” he said.

This isn’t about copyright law or marketing advantage – as it was with Greece’s legal battle in the EU over feta cheese. It’s about denying Israel’s legitimacy in the region.

And it’s a lie, because more than half of Israelis come from Muslim and Arab countries, with the largest groups from Iraq – which has excellent humus – and Morocco. What’s more, the Jews lived in Iraq longer than the Arabs, and in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria since Roman times at least. The Yemenite sabih, a pita filled with humus, eggplant, eggs, salad and spices, is an originally Jewish dish. The name itself, SABIH, is a Hebrew acronym for “schug, beitza, hatzil” – pepper sauce, egg, eggplant.

So who owns humus? And why deny our Baghdad-born Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Fuad Ben-Eliezer, or for that matter my half-Iraqi half-Turkish neighbor Roni, any ownership over the food they have eaten their entire lives, and that their great-grandparents had eaten in their day?

Ron Kampeas weighs in on my anti-Sand ranting with an interesting contribution about Middle Eastern marriage:

…the Associated Press just ran a story on how Israelis and Lebanese share a tradition of taking their vows to Cypus in order to circumvent confessionalist strictures.

Not only that, but in this neighborhood, the AP reports, Israel and Lebanon actually are progressive for recognizing the Cyprus marriages.

As Ron notes, this kind of cross-border reportage makes AP invaluable:

No one does across the border, collaborative stories better (see the pile of co-bylines at the end.) I remember the thrill of AP, about 1993, introducing IM technology into its content management system; and then, of instantly conversing with staffers in Beirut that until then had been little more than bylines to me.