Israel and Lebanon engage in a food fight

The Media Line Staff Israel (TML) – Israel and Lebanon have officially been in a state of war since 1949. But rather than fighter jets, tanks, rocket launchers and hidden arms cashes along the Lebanon’s Litani River, this week the conflict seemed dependent upon more and more mushy weapons: chickpeas, sesame paste, lemon juice and a pinch of salt, garlic and olive oil. The ‘Hummus war’, as it has already been dubbed, entered outright combat late last year when Israel claimed the Guinness World Record for the largest plate of hummus ever made. That sent Lebanese chefs, historians and politicians into a frenzy and over the weekend some 300 Lebanese chefs descended on Beirut’s Saifi market to put together a massive plate of hummus made up of 2,976 pounds of mashed chickpeas, 106 gallons of lemon juice and 57 pounds of salt. The dish weighed in at over two tons, crushing Israel’s previous world record by well over 1000 pounds. That was followed by an event on Sunday to claim back yet another world record from Israel, this time for the largest plate of tabbouleh, a salad of finely chopped tomatoes, parsley, bulgur, mint and onion. Lebanon also claims tabbouleh to be a national dish and used the 300 chefs to prove it with 3,500 pounds of parsley, 3,300 pounds of tomatoes and 925 pounds of onions. The final dish weighed 7841 pounds, easily surpassing Israel’s previous record of 5200 pounds. Thousands attended the two-day weekend event, proudly chanting “Lebanon” as the event organizers shouted into the microphone “Where is Hummus from? Where is Tabbouleh from?” “We wanted to break the Guinness record not only because Israel set it but because we believe Lebanese food should remain Lebanese,” Lebanese culinary figure Ramzi Choueiri, who led the hundreds of chefs, told The Media Line. “We hope in the near future that the Lebanese government will join in this effort.” Ghazi Zaiter, Lebanon’s minister of Industry and Petroleum attended the event but the government did not help finance it. “It was mostly put together by volunteers,” Choueiri said. “I offered the manpower and the know how, the chefs volunteered, a lot of the food was donated and in the end it even tasted good.” Sensitivity over the proprietorship of various Middle Eastern dishes has had a fraught history since various Israeli institutions began using hummus, falafel and tabbouleh to market the country’s culture. That has led various Lebanese to accuse Israel of ’stealing’ the dishes. The Lebanese blogosphere was so elate with the news that the country had taken back the hummus war trophy that many ridiculed Israel’s loss. “Fresh on the heels of a successful Lebanese bid to win the Guinness World Record for the largest plate of hummus, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has announced plans to steal back the record by launching a massive ‘hummus-themed luxury resort and spa’,” read a satirical post on the Beiruter, a Lebanese blog aggregator. ‘Hummus-Land’ will feature an enormous lagoon filled with hummus in which holiday-goers “will be able to swim, take canoe rides, and rejuvenate their bodies through the healing antioxidizing power of puréed chickpeas.” Fady Abboud, President of Lebanon’s Association of Lebanese Industrialists, argued that proprietorship over cuisine goes beyond issues of cultural ownership or appropriation, as Israel’s export of such dishes directly harms the Lebanese businessmen he represents. “Whenever my colleagues go to the international food fairs, they come back very upset that Israel is claiming that Lebanese cuisine is theirs,” Abboud told The Media Line. “This is a market which we believe is worth around one billion dollars worldwide and we are not going to stand by and watch pirates steal our cuisine that goes back hundreds of years.” Last year Abboud’s organization announced plans to sue Israel to stop it from marketing Arab dishes like hummus as Israeli. The organizers of the event compared their case to Scotch whisky, champagne from the Champagne region of France, and Greek efforts to have feta cheese officially declared Greek. A European Union court ruling awarded Greece the right to patent feta cheese in 2002 and Lebanon hopes to be awarded similar rights to hummus and tabbouleh. “We started by breaking the record just to remind the world that we are the mother and father of hummus,” said Abboud, who financed the events at a cost of around $150,000. “But it will not stop here. We are going to attempt to register hummus, tabbouleh and all other Lebanese dishes with the EU… The process is quite complicated, but we have done historical research and we have cookbooks dating back over 600 years.” “We are proud of our cuisine and hummus has been part of our culture for hundreds of years,” Abboud stressed. “Before Christ, sesame was ground and turned into a paste here in Lebanon. The first tin of hummus ever produced was here in Lebanon back in the 1950s, and we were the first to export it back in 1959.” Abboud said the Lebanese had no problem with Israelis enjoying and adapting Lebanese products. “I don’t believe in monopolies or claiming that nobody else should be enjoying hummus, and we are not saying that Jews living in Palestine a couple hundred years ago were not enjoying hummus,” Abboud said. “They probably were and we do not mind them enjoying Lebanese cuisine, indeed let the whole world enjoy our cuisine but let the world know it belongs to us.” Oren Drori, the head of marketing at Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, argued that Israel’s marketing of such dishes was intended to boost tourism, not exports. “We are trying to highlight different aspects of Israel and raise the curiosity of potential visitors,” Drori told The Media Line. “If as a byproduct it helps sell Israeli goods, that’s wonderful, but it’s certainly not our mandate.” “While it is not at the forefront of our marketing activities, food is becoming a major component of marketing as people look to add value to their trip,” he said. “For different reasons, hummus, tabbouleh and falafel have become fashionable in the U.S. so we are emphasizing that you can find both these simple ethnic dishes as well as the most sophisticated variety of foods all in Israel.” “I wouldn’t say there is one country that holds the original recipe,” Drori maintained. “If you ask a Jordanian it will be theirs, if you ask a Bedouin it will be theirs. It doesn’t really matter as long as people know that they can enjoy it all here in Israel.” Sagi Cooper, a prominent Israeli food and wine writer, said that regardless of its origins, hummus has become a part of Israeli identity. “There isn’t really anything that can be claimed as Israeli cuisine, Israeli food is made up of cultures upon cultures,” he told The Media Line. “But I don’t think there is something more Israeli than hummus. All sectors of Israeli society love and eat it and it’s what connects us to the region.” “Israelis take it very personally – hummus is ours and that’s it,” Cooper said. “Claiming something as your own is about self esteem, but I think we should just share it.” Cooper argued that the ‘Hummus war’ was based more on economic competition than a cultural clash. “It’s basically an export issue,” he said. “Hummus is a big part of the food industry, many Israeli companies are exporters and if you go all over the world hummus is considered to be an Israeli dish. Take this away and big Israeli companies would lose money.” Article � AHN – All Rights Reserved