Why the ‘falafel crisis’ should not be taken lightly

“Falafel: from colloquial Egyptian Arabic falāfil, plural of Arabic fulful, filfil ‘pepper’.”

I was ambling through the effervescent streets of Manhattan when I first found out that Israeli falafel existed.

There they were, a selection of bulky, illuminated letters hanging right above the humble doors of the store. “Best Israeli Falafel in New York,” it read, boisterous and sincere. And let me tell you this: the integrity that the letters propelled left me on the verge of doubting that ‘falafel’ – the only food I ever craved living outside of Jordan – was even part of my heritage too.

Since when is falafel Israeli? I had asked myself – not that it matters. (We’re all Middle Eastern, aren’t we? Some may disagree.) I simply felt a decent chunk of my identity fade, as though I had been all the while wrong about my Arab heritage.

It took me about two days worth of online research – and an extra half day of flicking through my grandmother’s old recipe books to find out that not only has falafel been adopted as Israel’s national dish, but also that this “falafel crisis” has been sparking political strife between Israelis and Arabs since the 1950s.

Even though some Israelis believe that the dish is purely Jewish, many others claim that it originated in Egypt (where it is made from fava beans and is called ‘ta’miya’). On the contrary, Arabs believe it to be entirely their own – that not only was it originated in Egypt but also that Israelis have no right to call the dish their own.

As for me, I came up with the following conclusion: I don’t care who claims the damn dish as their own today. I care about the dish’s right to be deemed as historically Arab as it is Israeli.

In a satirical piece targeting what the author implies to be the uneasiness of Arabs, Haaretz Contributor Vered Guttman writes, “If a dish becomes popular to the point where you can find it everywhere and it is eaten by everyone in the country, rich and poor, young and old, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, and many see it as their national dish, does it really matter where it came from?”

Then she wrote, “If everything was peaceful in our region this probably wouldn’t be an issue worth arguing about. Maybe it would be better to concentrate on the real problems? But then again, food fights might be a better choice,” clearly expressing her devout love for her ‘neighboring countries.’

Now let me tell you this: as an occupied entity, Palestine has been suffocating in an abyss of identity loss (oh, wait—it has also been literally suffocating since the Israeli government cut off their water supply a couple months ago). And as the ‘uneasy’ lot they are (not that they have been provoked to become as such, ever), they surely have the right to object to what Guttman had to say about cultural appropriation (i.e. if a dish becomes “so popular,” any culture can claim it as its own).

In fact, by this point, it really does “matter where [falafel] came from” because Palestinians have barely anything left to claim as part of their Arab heritage. And no, the “falafel crisis” should not be taken lightly. After all, not everything is as “peaceful” as need be, is it?

Again, I could not care less about the tangibilities of modern day ‘falafel,’ be it how it is served, fried, or even rolled. I could not care less about the fact that it is Egypt’s or Israel’s or Neptune’s national dish. What I do care about, and what deeply saddens me about the politics of falafel (and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, for that matter) is this non-existent freedom of dialogue that many argue exists between Palestinians and Israelis.

Notice, it is non-existent and that is exactly why people like Guttman will never accept the fact that ‘falafel’ is just as Arab as it is ‘Israeli.’