Hummus Envy

Hummus (the word has a few alternative English spellings) is a popular food dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas generally blended with tahini (a thick paste made of ground sesame seeds), olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic. Hummus originated in the Middle East and the word itself comes from either the Arabic word for chickpea or the contemporary Hebrew word for chickpea.

Whose hummus?

An otherwise mouth-watering (includes full color photos), apparently innocuous article,“Jerusalem’s Hottest Hummus,” in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend Sept. 21-22, 2013 edition (Adventure & Travel section), contains this little gem of a paragraph by the article’s author, Nicolas Brulliard, an independent journalist based in Jerusalem:

Of course, in this region every cultural marker is a point of contention in some respect. Israel, a nation of Jewish immigrants who bring along their own culinary traditions, has adopted hummus as a de facto national dish. Many Palestinians view that development as yet another example of colonial overreach.

Brulliard’s (colonial overreach) last sentence above is gratuitous. Europeans eat a lot of potatoes, which originated in the New World of the Western Hemisphere. Are the chips of British fish ‘n chips “imperialist”? Palestinian and other Arabs have availed themselves of many Israeli innovations, including a variety of irrigation techniques. Do Israelis complain of “misappropriation”? Why mention “colonial overreach” here, especially when modern Jewish settlement in Israel marks not a colonial entrprise but an indigenous people’s return?

One notes that the author has previously made snide jabs at Israel; for example, here where he wrote, “Livni has long been viewed as an honest and principled political figure – somewhat of an oddity in Israel’s political landscape …” Further, his writings don’t seem to contain such innuendo aimed at Arabs or others.

As to the charge that Israelis unjustifiably claim hummus as a national dish, another example of colonialism, nonsense!

Hummus had been common food for at least the more than half of the Israeli population (and their Israeli-born descendants) that arrived from Arab countries in large numbers beginning in 1948-49. These Jews may have lost their homes and neighborhoods when forced to flee by their fellow (Muslim Arab) countrymen but they didn’t lose their taste for their beloved native hummus.

Mr. Brulliard, there’s plenty of fuel stoking the anti-Israel propaganda fire without adding hummus, which, in fact, burns poorly if at all. B’te avon! (Good appetite!).