Bernie backer James Zogby accuses Israel of culinary “genocide”
Passive-aggressive attempt to deprive Israeli Jews of their own Middle Eastern heritage and culture by claiming their culinary culture is stolen.
As someone who studies the anti-Israel movement, the outburst on Twitter by pollster and Bernie Sanders backer James Zogby comes as no real surprise.
But unless you study the bizarro alternate-universe of Israel hatred, this probably will leave you shaking your head in disbelief.
To anti-Israel activists, be they Palestinian or western liberals, everything Israel does is genocide and ethnic cleansing. The facts matter not. The population of non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel has grown dramatically since Israel’s founding, and Israeli Arabs have the highest life expectancy of anyone in the Arab world. Yet the word genocide and ethnic cleansing routinely is used to describe Israeli Jews actions towards the Arab minority.
So too non-Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza. The populations there also have grown dramatically, so much so that anti-Israel activists pin their hopes on this supposed demographic time bomb. Yet again, genocide and ethnic cleansing routinely are applied to Israeli Jews’ treatment of those growing populations.
But it doesn’t stop there. For many years, if not decades, there has been a claim of Israeli cultural genocide against Palestinians, often focused on foods that have been associated as Israeli in the public mind for decades, but Palestinians claim is theirs.
One of the leading intellectual drivers of this food genocide theory is hate-tweeting former professor Steven Salaita, one of the architects of the academic boycott of Israel, who actually wrote an article called ‘Israeli’ hummus is theft, not appropriation:
“…. the controversy about Israel’s appropriation of Palestinian food – most infamously its claim to hummus, a lucrative product in Europe and North America – has nothing to do with Jews eating Arabic food. In fact, it has nothing to do with Jews at all. That ludicrous idea is possible only because Zionists aggressively conflate Jewishness with Israel.
Instead, it has everything to do with a deliberate, decades-old programme to disappear Palestinians….
When Zionists (or their oblivious collaborators) claim Arabic food as Israeli, it’s not a paragon of intercultural harmony but the studious destruction of Palestinian culture….
Using Arabic food as a symbol of Zionist identity hands over the day-to-day victuals of the native to the coloniser. It’s a project of erasure, a portent of nonexistence, a promise of genocide.,,,
Such is to be expected of an ideology defined by a rapacious appetite for other people’s possessions. “Israeli” couscous, hummus, falafel, shawarma, fattoush, mjuddera, and knafeh, like the state forever aggregating glory from deception, is merely a rawboned fantasy nourished by a gluttonous diet of empty calories.”
So Israeli Hummus = Call to Genocide in the bizarro world of BDS activists and Israel haters.
FWIW, what we now refer to as Hummus has ancient roots from many places in the Middle East, and arguably is mentioned in the Book of Ruth (depending on translation), thousands of years before the Arabs who conquered what is now Israel began in the middle of the last century to self-identify as “Palestinian.” For anti-Israel activists to claim Hummus as the property of Palestinians is not a serious claim, but it’s a claim that is made with incredible frequency.
It’s also true that Hummus is something of an Israeli national dish, which is why so many people associate it with Israel:
Hummus is the common denominator for all Israelis. Ask an expatriate what he misses most, watch two Israelis argue for hours about where the best hummus is served, or try driving through the hummus-eateries filled streets of Jaffa on a Saturday and you’ll understand:
Israelis simply love their hummus. That is understandable considering the fact that an average Israeli consumes about 10 kg (about 22 lbs) of hummus a year
Not surprisingly, the most popular brand of hummus in the U.S., controlling more than half the market share, is “Sabra” hummus. Sabra is a term referring to a type of prickly fruit (rough on the outside, sweet on the inside), often used to refer to Israelis born in Israel as opposed to immigrants. That was particularly significant decades ago, where as now the vast majority of Israelis are native-born.
Some anti-Israel loons claim that Sabra hummus was named after the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon, but that is false and just an anti-Israel libel. Sabra also is the target of college dining hall boycott efforts because it is partially owned by an Israeli company (though the chick peas are grown in the U.S. and the main factory is in Virginia).
This is a long-winded way of getting to the Twitter meltdown by Zogby, the son of Maronite Catholic immigrants from Lebanon. Zogby is best known for Zogby polling, but also founded the Arab American Institute. Zogby doesn’t like being called anti-Israel, but he certainly gives that impression.
Zogby appeared at an anti-Israel panel during the 2016 DNC convention sponsored by an anti-Israel group, and accompanied by Linda Sarsour, Keith Ellison, and Josh Rubner:
In 2016, Zogby was named by Bernie Sanders to Bernie’s DNC Platform team, and unsuccessfully battled with the Hillary team over the traditional Democratic Party pro-Israel platform. Zogby also is a hardcore Bernie Bros., and serves as Chair of The Sanders Institute.
Zogby can be effective because he doesn’t usually come across as a nutcase and screamer, unlike so many who engage in similar “pro-Palestinian” efforts, like Linda Sarsour.
Though on Twitter today, Zogby lost it. Over a tweet by Rachel Ray about Israeli food:
Israeli food! Hummus! Must mean … GENOCIDE!
Twitter erupted in mockery.
https://twitter.com/Philassie/status/945736489853472768
https://twitter.com/DanielKohn99/status/945735419634651141
& what about those Italians committing a veritable holocaust by claiming Chinese noodles & ice cream as “authentic” Italian?? pic.twitter.com/kgS1MiDu10
— rob eshman (@Foodaism) December 26, 2017
Poor Zogby needs a history lesson in cultural #genocide. It was the Arabs who ethnically cleansed the Jews who lived in the Middle East in Arab countries for thousands of years. Now you're claiming they can't eat their own food?!
— Michele Chabin (@MicheleChabin1) December 26, 2017
https://twitter.com/BretStephensNYT/status/945716516858814464
https://twitter.com/BretStephensNYT/status/945758524000362496
I know this will shock you, but Zogby doubled, tripled and quadrupled down:
This all is humorous at one level.
But at another level it speaks of the pathology of the anti-Israel movement.
It’s a passive-aggressive attempt to deprive Israeli Jews of their own Middle Eastern heritage and culture by claiming their culinary culture were stolen from “Palestinian” latecomers to the region.
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Comments
Oddly, I can buy very good humus from Israel at my local grocery stores.
I’ve never seen any from “Palestine”.
Maybe, if they’d concentrate on being humane, they could offer things that people might want to buy.
There’s a very slow market for terrorist tunnels…
Yeah, that market collapsed a while ago. 😀
The problem with Christian Arabs is their desperately clawing hold on pan-Arabism under which they will do anything destroy Jews to appease the Muslim Arabs. Once, what is now Arab lands was Jewish, with heathen nomads, then Jewish and Christian, then Islamic by force of blood.
If ever Arabs embrace their history—they won’t because the point of the destruction of artifacts excavated from Temple Mount and elsewhere is not just the erasure of Jewish history in Israel but also the destruction of pre-Islamic Arab history—they will abandon Islam.
Borderline unhinged… or all the way unhinged?
John Zogby is the pollster. This is his brother, Jim Zogby, who has been a mouthpiece for the PLO and Hamas for at least 35 years now. He founded the “Palestine Human Rights Campaign” in 1979, and then helped found the “American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee”.
Jim Zogby has been a dedicated jew-hater for his entire life. There’s no difference between him and a spokesman for Hezbollah.
The Jew-hatred among Arabic-speaking Christians is widespread and distressing. Stockholm syndrome, I suppose; Jew-hating comes with the language, based in the Koran and ahadith.
Jews living in various countries in the Middle East, before they were expelled in 1947-48, undoubtedly ate the typical foods of the area, just like everyone else. So did Jews living in the then-British mandate. It is no surprise that Jews migrating from Europe after the Holocaust also adopted the regional cuisine. Kind of hard to replicate a German or Polish diet in a totally different climate.
Besides, I rather assume hummus can be served with either meat or milk, which would be a plus for those keeping kosher, yes?
No, I’m afraid it’s older than that, from before there was a Koran or an Islam. It’s the old Greek antisemitism that infected Xianity by the late 1st century CE. Western Xianity has mostly rid itself of the infection, thank goodness; Eastern Xianity lags behind.
Although he was mightily criticized for it, I was quite proud of Ted Cruz when he went to an Arab Christian conference here in the US, and told them “The government of Israel is the best friend you’ve got in the middle east, and if you don’t stand with Israel, we won’t stand with you.”
Boy, did that make them howl! But he was right.
Wherever it originated, it is certainly amplified by Islam’s foundational traditions.
I agree that Eastern Christianity lags behind in this regard, alas.
Indeed.
“…and serves as Chair of The Sanders Institute.”
The Sanders Institute: as internationally renowned as the Ponds Institute for thinking Deep Thoughts.
What I find amusing is that Rachel Ray is a hardcore Leftist. She literally worships both Buraq and Michelle Obama, and brought that worship into her shows and interviews. Which is why I stopped watching her and buying her cookbooks. There is no doubt she is on the other side, albeit I do not know if she views the Holocaust as a plus or a minus.
Watching the Left engage in intramural attacks and wanna-be purges is a great pleasure.
Barack. Cognate to the Hebrew name Baruch, and means “blessing. Buraq is Mohammed’s magical horse, is cognate to the Hebrew name Baraq, and means “lightning”. They’re easily confused, but there’s no etymological connection between them.
I am not fluent in either Hebrew or Arabic, but I was under the impression that Muhammed’s magical horse was named “Lightning” after his ability to fly. Which I believed was the source of Obama’s name. Thus, I chose the “Buraq” to emphasize his, at the least, favoritism towards Islam above everything.
If you are fluent in Hebrew or Arabic, I will yield the point without argument, but may still use the “Lightning” translation just to micturate in the Wheaties of Democrats.
Didnt he also have a big ugly jackass called michelle?
Have you noticed that Martha Stewart’s cooking show now has Arab sponsorship (al Jazera, IIRC, but I stopped watching some time ago when I noticed the change) and that she features MidEastern recipes on nearly all of her shows now? Her baking show does not have the same sponsors and many of those shows still feature American regional baking.
You do remember correctly, and I also quit watching at that time.
Notice how the contours are the same as Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Progressives want to believe they have the moral high ground, but the facts are against them. So they invent a tenuous narrative and scream it loudly and repeatedly, hoping that will make it come true. They will tell any lie in service of this narrative.
Once again, this is possible only because they live in a bubble where competing narratives are censored.
I am not a big fan of what passes for traditional Jewish food or Israeli food. I find all of it boring, and like many, find the the culinary rules long outdated. However, the oldest cultivated chickpeas have been found in Jericho. 7,000 years ago.
End of story. Not only did the Jews first cultivate them, they invented humus.
7000 years ago, 5000 BC, is well before, using any chronology, the time frame for a separate Jewish people. Abraham, using the longest chronology i am familiar with, lived around 3000 BC, many others would place him in the 2000 to 2300 BC time frame. So chick peas were eaten for a long time in the Middle East prior to the emergence of a separate Jewish people or Arabic speaking people. I have no Idea about Hummus itself.
The guy’s so worked up he’s lost his English. Cultural genocide would be banning hummus. Adopting it is the exact opposite; call it “appropriation” if you like, whatever that means, but calling it genocide just makes no sense.
Oh, and “Israeli couscous” really is Israeli. It was invented in Israel in the 1950s, and is unknown anywhere else in the middle east. It’s not really couscous at all.
The Ruth thing, by the way, is sheer nonsense. חומץ appears many times in the Bible and it always means vinegar. The standard field lunch was indeed pita dipped in vinegar, and Boaz and his fieldhands would have liked it just fine.
Ironically, the sabra fruit, the very icon of Israeli nativeness, is not native to Israel but to the American southwest. And the ubiquitous eucalyptus is native to Australia.
Too be clear Israel as a country does not endorse any food except kosher.
So Remove “Israel” because it’s just code word for “Jews” aka AntiSemitism
No government “endorses” the national cuisine. There is no DC-sanctioned food, and yet there is clearly something known as “American food”, that is recognizable as such wherever in the world it is served. There is a recognizable Israeli cuisine that is served in Israeli restaurants all over the world, but not recognizably “Jewish”. When you go to an Israeli restaurant you don’t expect gefilte fish or cholent — or chraimeh, malawah, or kubbeh soup either. You do expect chumus, shipudim and shnitzels if it’s meat, shakshuka and Israeli salad and “toasts” if it’s milk, etc.
Muslims and their Leftist apologist-allies wax more outraged and offended over this infantile stupidity involving the origins of a party dip, than they do over widespread Islamic belligerence, violence, totalitarianism and atrocities committed by Muslims worldwide against gays, women, Jews, Christians, Hindus and other religious minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere.
This speaks volumes about these reprobates’ utterly misguided priorities and their rank moral bankruptcy.
There was a Muslim saying in Iraq (my country of birth) after the forced EXPULSION of most of its indigenous Jews “After Saturday comes Sunday” meaning “after the Jews will be the turn of the Christians”
From a population of 1,300,000 in 2003, the Christians have been reduced to less than 200,000 and more are leaving
Zogby and most of the Christian Arabs in the West live in a Twilight Zone world of DENIAL of all Facts and Reality regarding what Muslims are actually doing to literally EXTERMINATE Christians everywhere they can
It is beyond comprehension how most of the so called Arab Christian leaders in Israel especially continue supporting the very Muslim Arabs who are eradicating them all over the Arab and Muslim countries as has happened in Lebanon, Bethlehem, Nazareth etc while Christians are best protected in Israel
There is a ray of light when more and more young Christians in Israel are now asserting their Israeli identity above their enforced Arab one
IQ al Rassooli
Kafir & Proud!
I wrote about that phrase back in 2016, first the Saturday people then the Sunday people, https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/01/first-the-saturday-people-then-the-sunday-people/
Well, all I can say is, Italians better give back their tomatoes. Tomatoes are native to the Americas; even the word “tomato” is derived from Aztec language. If we’re going to go full “cultural appropriation is sin,” the only people without this sin will be some as-yet uncontacted tribe living someplace no one’s found yet.
(And let’s no even talk about “appropriating” western technologies because, no doubt, “that’s different.”)
Although I am a little surprised that none of these nutcases have claimed (yet) that Jews stole the food on the Passover seder plate.
Israeli-Developed Steel Substitute Made for Space Travel Now Used for Hip Replacements
No Soup [Hip Replacements] for you.
http://www.theTower.org/5787oc-israeli-developed-steel-substitute-made-for-space-travel-now-used-for-hip-replacements/
To James & John Zogby, I offer you a $200,000 challenge if and when you can find the name of a state called Palestine and its people Palestinians in the last 6000 years of recorded history prior to their concoction in 1964!
I have had this challenge for the last 12 years on the internet, my talk shows and articles and so far I have not had anyone prove me wrong, maybe a ‘genius’ like yourself will cut this Gordian Knot
Since such an entity and people never existed, your heart break is as FALSE as your asinine accusation
Put Up or Shut Up!
IQ al Rassooli
Kafir & Proud!
I suspect you need to travel through the occupied territories and just see what sort of fine and sophisticated cuisine the average Palestinian (and even terrorist!) is eating. And the water they are drinking etc.. After fifty years you could have had just one little iota of compassion. Not everything centers around anti-semites and how they are under every bed.
The average “Balestinian” is eating a lot better than his grandparents did 50 years ago, thankyouverymuch. But not nearly as well as he would be eating were he not subject to the rapacious PA, and were so many of his compatriots not so focused on murdering Jews that the Israelis were forced to protect themselves, thus limiting his employment opportunities.
RasMoyag ‘occupied’ from whom? In 1967 there was NO state that Israel ‘occupied’ any territory from. For 19 years (1948 to 1967) not a single nation on Earth and not a single Arab, Western Politician or News Media spoke of the ‘West Bank’ OCCUPIED by Jordan or Gaza OCCUPIED by Egypt. These territories became ‘occupied’ ONLY when Israel defeated the Arabs who were intending to EXTERMINATE her.
Further more let me enlighten you with FACTS not Arab propaganda:
It should have been obvious that ALL UN resolutions since 1949 are legally INVALID for the simple reason that the Arabs who were given the chance for a TWO states solution in Mandated Palestine by UN Resolution 181 in 1947 decided to start a war of EXTERMINATION against the newly born state of Israel
This was the FIRST ACT of WAR that the UN was created to avert, thus the Arabs ABROGATED (made Null and Void) the UN resolution and its terms and conditions allowing the creation of a Two States solution including all articles regarding Jerusalem
The Arabs started the war and LOST and now they (like ALL Muslims) whine and pretend to be VICTIMS of aggression
What Arabs call NAKBA / Catastrophe (their failure to exterminate Israelis) and the ‘refugees’ resulted because the Arabs acted in AGGRESSION against the State of Israel and lost; but of course from the WARPED and illogical minds of Arabs, this must be overlooked and they should absurdly be allowed to go back once again to UN resolution 181
WHY no one is bringing these crystal clear FACTS to the fore front of these spurious and illegitimate ‘resolutions’ beggars belief especially by Israelis
IQ al Ibn Q Rassooli
Kafir & Proud!
And do you not see that it is your own words explain exactly why the disaster continues. It is an existential issue for Israel and the recent Israeli leaders act completely against the long term interests of their own country.
I don’t know why people keep mentioning GA resolution 181 as if it ever had any legal force. It didn’t. The GA has no power to dictate anything. That resolution did not establish Israel, and Israel’s legitimacy in international law does not derive from it. The resolution’s only significance is symbolic — it represents the nations of the world’s clear commitment to the principle that there ought to be a Jewish state in at least part of the Jewish homeland. It was a recommendation, which was reluctantly accepted by one party but not by the other, so it was never implemented and was rendered moot by the war and its results. It’s now completely off the table.
I don’t know why people keep mentioning GA resolution 181 as if it ever had any legal force. It didn’t. The GA has no power to dictate anything. That resolution did not establish Israel, and Israel’s legitimacy in international law does not derive from it. The resolution’s only significance is symbolic — it represents the nations of the world’s clear commitment to the principle that there ought to be a Jewish state in at least part of the Jewish homeland. It was a recommendation, which was reluctantly accepted by one party but not by the other, so it was never implemented and was rendered moot by the war and its results. It’s now completely off the table.