Khommos bit-takhiné...
Surface culture encompasses tangible and observable elements that contribute to the distinctive identity of a cultural group or region. Music, food, dress, and other aspects often define a nation’s surface culture. For instance, Scotland is recognized by men’s kilts, Salsa music represents Latin American culture, and Japan is known for its Sushi cuisine.
Authentic culture evolves organically over generations. However, “Israel’s” top-down approach to culture lacks genuine identifying characteristics. Throughout its history, “Israel” has either fabricated, annexed, or reconstructed both surface and deep cultural elements through falsehoods, myths, and fables. Unlike conventional development of cultures, Israeli surface culture came prepackaged—American fast-food style—by appropriating those very elements from the age-old traditional Palestinian culture.
A prominent aspect of any society’s surface culture is its local cuisine. In 1948, “Israel” ethnically cleansed Palestine of the non-Jewish Palestinians, took over their land, and brazenly claimed Palestinian culinary treasures like hummus, falafel, baba ghanouj, tabouli salad, couscous (maftool), freekeh, kubbeh, mujadara, pita bread, and many more. All it took was to identify a Palestinian dish and then add the noun “Israeli” before its name.
Enumerating the complete list of plagiarized Palestinian cuisine is too long to be explored in greater detail, especially as Western familiarity with Palestinian culinary culture remains limited. Thus, this article will expose “Israel’s” largest surface culture heist in history by focusing on two internationally renowned dishes: hummus and falafel.
Let’s begin by exploring the word “hummus” to understand its origin and meaning in the Arabic language. In Arabic, “hummus” literally translates to chickpeas or garbanzo beans and does not mean mash, dip, or paste. The word “hummus” is used as an abbreviation of the full Arabic term that refers to the famous dish “hummus bitahini.” This means mashed chickpeas, tahini sauce, and garnishments. Tahini, a ground sesame butter, is an essential ingredient in the making of hummus and baba ghanouj dips.
Hummus is much more alien to Israeli cuisine than burrito and pizza to American kitchens. At least burrito and pizza share the same root in Latin letters. The Arabic word “hummus” does not exist in the spoken Israeli language, Hebrew. In fact, Hebrew speakers would be challenged to master the orthoepy of the word “hummus.” As there is no hard “h” (ح) in the Hebrew syllabary, and in general, when Hebrew speakers attempt to enunciate “hummus,” or any Arabic word with a hard “h” (ح), they mispronounce it as “kh” (خ), in this case “khummus,” not “hummus.”
The full name of the dish becomes more challenging when adding its second part, tahini. The “h” in tahini is also a hard “h” (ح), where an Israeli would distort the Palestinian dish “hummus bitahini” to “khummus bitakhini.” This is an insult to the language, culinary etiquette, and to Arab chefs in the Levant kitchen.
To paraphrase Palestinian-American comedian Mo Amer, “hummus does not exist in your lexicon, you can’t pronounce it, how can it be your national food?”