A Writer Describes Palestinian Cuisine, and the World Around It

Lovely.

“But images of the Israeli military checkpoints and soldiers she’d seen throughout her travels in the West Bank and Gaza crowded her head.” NYT writers never seem to ask, “Why are there soldiers, checkpoints and sanctions?” Might it have something to do with the decades of suicide bombings that followed the Oslo Accords? The random street stabbings perpetrated by Palestinians on Israeli civilians? The hundreds of rockets aimed at Israeli homes and schools? Or the years of Hamas terrorism after Israel forcibly removed settlers from Gaza, giving up land for (no) peace? Yasmin Khan is a supporter of BDS and has appeared on platforms with Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS, which calls for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish nation. Please note that prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, generations of Jews lived in the British Mandate and they too, were called Palestinians.

"Israel is now the home of nearly nine million citizens, with an identity that is as distinctively and proudly Israeli as the Dutch are Dutch or the Danes Danish. Anti-Zionism proposes nothing less than the elimination of that identity and the political dispossession of those who cherish it, with no real thought of what would likely happen to the dispossessed. Do progressives expect the rights of Jews to be protected should Hamas someday assume the leadership of a reconstituted “Palestine”?" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/sunday/israel-progressive-anti-semitism.html?fbclid=IwAR3rjEqVEtVPi9iVrDxsPn2gxlMYcooH4J0wYfuW97m-nO3IsWXvaJ5wVEI

Many of these comments are condemning Ms. Khan for being human. The easy vitriol spills out degrading Ms. Khan's humanity seemingly because she witnessed things that caused her anguish and then chose to put words to that anguish. Food comes in many flavors as does ones spirit & love.

Thank you for the wonderful article on Palestinian cuisine. The politics and political statements have no place in the food section and actually detracted from the article. The political debate is best left to the editorial section of the paper.

I wonder what a cookbook from Gaza or Ramallah was called in say 1960, years before Arafat and the Arabs started calling themselves Palestinians, a term previously used for the Jews in the area. “One of the things about the Middle East is that no matter what is going on, you’re going to make sure that any guest is showered with food and drink,” she said. What PC nonsense, tell that to the truly suffering folks living in war ravaged countries like Yemen or Syria.

I was born a Moslem on the edge of the desert of the small state of Jordan 78 years ago. I immigrated to the USA in June 1964 and never looked back. I consider my self 100% American and so do my children and grandchildren. For 9 months before that date I worked in Palestine on the West Bank of the Jordan River teaching in a junior Agriculture College and learned to appreciate and enjoy the Palestinian dishes described elegantly by miss Khan. I am glad she wrote this book and all the hateful comments will not distract readers from the fact that Palestinians did and do and will exist and prosper regardless of those who wish their culture and them otherwise.

So she's concentrating on the hate, while the fantastic Sami Tamimi, a real Palestinian, shows us the love. Also, I'm not buying her accounts of "Seeing the physical apparatus of the Israeli occupation" as non biased, since those were the years of Salam Fayyad as prime minister, when there was real hope in the air, and much better conditions on the ground. You could've traveled then from Tel Aviv to Ramallah in about 45 minutes, due to almost no checkpoints on the way. New lovely red rooftoped Palestinian neighborhoods had grown on hill tops all around the West Bank. Unfortunately, those times were short lived, and both sides have succumbed to their respective extremists.

I am surprised by some vituperative comments of readers with addresses in Israel and other obvious Zionists, accusing her of judeophobia and being an agent of Islamism. I have neither read, nor intend to read, Ms. Khan's books. But on one of her web sites she describes herself as born in London, of Iranian and Pakistany parents, who raised her and her sister in the spirit of multicultural, Islamic religious, and Socialist values. Travels through the Herzlian "State of the Jews" may not be pleasant for someone with the name Yasmin Khan. The only thing I hold against her is her Moussakat or fried chicken with spices on her web site that one is supposed to eat with the fingers, in total disregard of the Occidental table manners.

Ms. Khan's message speaks volumes: "Palestinian voices are not always heard. Listen."

I share my thought. And although I pay for my subscription, you still refused to run it.

I wonder if the streets and squares named after suicide bombers also crowded her head. Just curious.

What hypocrisy on the part of the cookbook author to concoct this premise for her project and what biased "journalism" on the part of the Times to publish this very long and simpatico puff piece promoting her book. There are plenty of recipes from this region, and plenty of coverage of them in the New York Times, so why accord this much space (a cover story?!) to a dilettante in both politics and cuisine? A squib would have been enough, or a listing in an article about new cookbooks.

This cuisine should be labeled Palestinian-Arab food. Palestinians can be Jews too. Jews were Palestinians in fact.

Like some other commentators, I was put off by the line in the article that no Israeli sources were cited. I have several Israeli cookbooks in which non-Israelis are cited. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are going anywhere, so the two groups need to learn to get along. Sharing food is one way to do this. This weekend, our daughter is coming home and we will make the chicken or shrimp dish from the article. I plan to serve it with a Druze Mountain Bread from the Israeli Soul cookbook, which I have made a couple of times now with great success.

Suddenly, thanks to two recipes here, I have traveled half-way around the world and 21 years back in time, to when I was the U.S. Embassy economic officer covering Gaza. I used to feast on a lunch of mussakhan in the office of Salam al-Fayyad, before he was Prime Minister, back when he was the IMF resrep to the Palestinian Authority. However, we called it "Abu Zukhti chicken," because it was then-Minister of Finance Nashishibi (aka, Abu Zukhti) who used to send his driver out to bring it back to his office and then told Salam's driver where his favorite place was to find it. Next, the zibdiyit gambari was the specialty at Abu Salam, a lovely yet simple fish restaurant at the Gaza harbor. In the rivalry among factionalized Fatah security forces, the chef was many others who were taken hostage, and abused and tortured until ransom was paid. I worked some connections on his behalf (as well as other innocent, ordinary people in the small business community of whom I became aware), and he was released. Word spread of my efforts, so when I next dined at Abu Salam, the meal was over the top. The spicy shrimp in tomato was always incredible, but this time, the chef had somehow outdone himself and all the prior servings I'd had of it. How I wish this food could erase the hardship, suffering, violence, and loss of these past two decades, so that I could sit at Abu Salam again, enjoy the sea breeze, and watch children fly their homemade kites.

Food is a universal language of love

Thank you to the NYT for this powerful and much needed article. Yasmin Khan's book is truly worthy of a wider audience.

What a sadness and shame that this author [and the author of the article] who are supposedly concerned about human rights and wrongs, must spread the propaganda and outright lies even in a cookbook.

Ms Khan did not list the pride of Gaza's cuisine, Maftoul.

All these foods have their roots in Armenian cuisine. When the Turks conquered Armenian Anotolia in the 1600’s the Turks adopted the Armenian cuisine. With the wide spread of the Ottoman Empire, this cuisine followed. It’s all Ottoman cuisine via Armenian Cusine.

"Palestinian cuisine" a.k.a. a sub-cuisine of the Levant, is indeed delicious and a change from European/American/Eastern fare. That having been said, the political overlay of the article predisposes an unsophisticated reader to believe that the "occupying power" has purloined even the very fare that Palestinians eat! The truth of Israeli cuisine is that it is an amalgam of both Europe and Middle Eastern. Half of Israeli Jews have roots centuries or millennia old, not in Europe, but in the Middle East. It is to the disadvantage of Palestinians that their politicians lack the delicious flavor of their food... please pass the falafel.

Everyone in that part of the world eats the same foods: Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Kurds...

Bought this book last year & prepared already a few dishes : fantastic cuisine : a celebration of Levantine tastes. A must have as a companion to Ottolenghi's Jerusalem.

I grew up in an area with a significant Lebanese minority population so I was very fortunate to be introduced to hummus, falafel and the like from a young age. I foolishly thought all Arabic food was more or less the same until I befriended a Palestinian neighbor in my thirties. Her cooking blew me away. Of course there were the familiar flavors of the Mediterranean but it was also very distinct and always delicious.

In 1985 my Israeli guide told me and a fellow traveler to meet her in the lobby of the hotel. She then proceeded to take us to a Palestinian restaurant in the middle of Jerusalem. We had an 16 course meal which I remember as being one of the best meals I have ever eaten in my life. I met a relative of the person who owned that restaurant a couple of years ago. He was surprised I had gone there and told me that it still exists today. If that food was any indication of the potential quality of Palestinian cuisine then I would recommend that everyone try it. So good and unforgettable.

After three fairly incendiary comments of Feb. 4, were taken off this page, one may ask a question, "What is really Palestinian cuisine?" Ms. Khan focuses on three small areas of Palestine, as a geographic region, the whole inhabited by semitic tribes or peoples practicing different religions. The variety of the regional foods is controlled by the paucity of game, lack of grazing land, dry climate, and a much poorer selection of edible marine life in Eastern Mediterranean by comparison to its Western part. And a final question, unless I missed the answer in the article: what is "Zaitoun"?

I have no fish to fry in this sorely slanted journey through culinary political science but I find the mix of hatred too hard on my GI tract. I can’t eat and argue.

After robbing the lands, Israelis robbed their culture. They can't agree on how to pronounce Hummus for example reflecting its levantine origins. Falafel is pushed as Israeli, but none or is an extreme rarity to have a Hebrew word starting with an F. No one says Palafel.

Let me understand this. The New York Times highlights a book about so called Palestinian cooking (as if Palestinian cooking is distinct from Jordanian or other Arab cooking) and makes a point of stating that no Israelis were interviewed or partook in this book. The article also states that East Jerusalem which contains the Western Wall, the holiest site in all of Judaism, is part of the West Bank. Jerusalem, King David's capital. Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Now imagine a book on southern cooking by a white author. The New York Times writes an article on it and says no black people contributed to or were interviewed for the book because white voices are not heard enough. Can you see the racism and bigotry? Shame on you, N.Y. Times. Your anti Jewish and anti Israel BIAS is showing. Again. And again.

The kitchen can be a dangerous place. Sharp knives. Hot pots and pans. Scalding water. Food, it appears, can become an instrument of a political struggle. For example, who created falafel and which humus is the best? Palestinians have turned cuisine into a major issue of ethnic and national identity within the context of the Arab conflict with Israel and Zionism. They have put Palestine on a plate. In this article, I see that this has morphed into a sub-issue which I'll call "cuisine geography". According to this "Palestine-on-a-Plate" geographic cuisine, the borders of "Palestine" seem to be defined as what one cooks. But has the desire to belittle Jewish cultural attachment to the land become framed as simply a matter of hunger? In Ze'ev Jabotinsky's 1937 testimony before the Peel Commission, he said, "when the Arab claim is confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is like the claims of appetite versus the claims of starvation." The politics of cuisine seem to have deep historical roots in the struggle between Jews and Arabs. Let us hope the the correct ingredients, proper seasoning and no over-cooking may, some day, bring us a diplomatic dish we can all partake in.

I'm so grateful to Mayukh Sen, to Yasmin Khan, and to the New York Times food section editors for this recognition of Palestine and Palestinian food. It has been a very long time coming so as a delayed gratification it's all the more welcome. Plus the recipes look wonderful--but why wouldn't they be? Can't wait to tackle them!

Thank you for this wonderful expose on Palestinian cooking. Now I really regret the fact that during my Israel trip I did not have the opportunity to taste this wonderful cuisine. I will definitely try the dishes mentioned. Thank you Yasmin for opening a new door for the world to see and taste.