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Friday, June 06, 2014

First the Jews steal the keffiyeh, hummus and falafel. But now: Kenafa!

We've seen many times that Palestinian Arabs claim that Jews have "stolen" their culture, by eating hummus and falafel, or by wearing Jewish keffiyehs and claiming it is their own (which, actually, it might be.)

Now, Dr. Salim Nazzal says that the Jews have gone too far, by eating (and supposedly claiming) kenafa, a sweet dairy dish.

I have never heard that Jews claim this dish. Kenafa apparently originated in Egypt, although there seems to have been a variant that was centered around Nablus using their cheese.

Nazzal's complaints are hysterical:

Zionists now using a new tactic to integrate themselves in the area knowing that it excluded them. This tactic is based on the theft of Palestinian culture and claiming it for themselves, in other words they want to say that they are not invaders from overseas as it is, but Eastern people of the region. And their claim that the Kenafa sweets are Jewish is the latest thing from the mind of the Zionist Jew who lives an existential crisis and a crisis of identity, despite his military superiority. Just claiming this shows the crisis in which they live. It is a crisis of legitimacy of their presence in Palestine.

I am not seeing any Jews complaining that Palestinians love to eat matzoh. No one would be upset if Palestinian Arabs started claiming cholent or gefilte fish - it would actually be funny. It seems that the existential crisis is not from the Jewish side - we have lots of traditions from all over the world, thank you - but from the "Palestinian" side where people freak out over supposedly having their culture "stolen."

If culture can be so easily stolen, maybe it wasn't your culture to begin with.