Al-Jazeerah’s English channel explores via YouTube the cuisine of Jerusalem (part 1 and part 2) and according to an excellent article by the Jerusalem Metro Blog (JMB), “…You know what? They did a great job.”

JMB explains the revealing twists of this video piece, because this isn’t just about mashed chickpeas, but (as with all things Middle East) also identity and politics. Jewish viewers might be surprised at Al-Quds University’s Dr. Ali Qleibo’s  passionate rant about the appropriation of hummus by the Jewish State.

The JMB post is a few months old, but just last week, Lebanon sued Israel over claiming hummus as it’s own, saving this half-written post of mine from purgatory in the “Drafts” folder.

Says Jerusalem Metro:

Given their basketful of legitimate and more pressing grievances, the depth of the Palestinian obsession with Israelis’ purported appropriation of their national cuisine hinted at in the report is odd — especially since most of the cuisine in question is not originally Palestinian, or even Arab.

Follows then the article’s interesting exploration of the origins of the typical Middle Eastern menu. Hummus = pan-Middle Eastern. Shewarma = Turkish of the Ottoman Era. Fuul = pre-Arab Egyptian. Falafel = northern African. But needless to say, these foods aren’t European. Certainly not European Jewish. It’s reasonable to say that they were brought to Israel by Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews from the region.

Which just goes to show you that there’s not such food as “Jewish.”

Jewish cuisine, of course, is defined essentially by its tendency to adopt and Judaize the native dishes of whichever far-flung corner of the Diaspora the Jews have found themselves in…Ultimately, even if cuisine is a fundamental expression of identity and cultural affiliation, it can belong to no one.

And honestly, if all of us, from Rehovot to Ramallah, from Tel Aviv to Tikrit, from Jerusalem to Jeddah, can agree that hummus is pretty much the best thing ever, perhaps one day we can agree to stop waving guns at each other – or at the very least, we’ll start shooting each other over chickpea-to-tehina-to-lemon ratios instead of land and religion, which seems, somehow, a much nobler conflict.

Amen.