There is a brand new book, published January 2026, by Dafna Hirsch, called the
The Israeli Career of Hummus: Colonial Appropriation, Authenticity, and Distinction. It is an entire book that argues that Israel culturally appropriated hummus from Palestinian Arabs.
An entire book.
The
summary says "Hirsch shows how the Arab identity of hummus functions as a semiotic resource, which is sometimes suppressed and at other times leveraged to lend authenticity to hummus―and thus to its consumers."
This means that if Israelis downplay the Arab origins of hummus, that is proof of erasure, appropriation, cultural colonization. But if Israelis acknowledge and emphasize the Arab origins, that is proof of exploitation, orientalist authenticity-mining, symbolic domination.
No matter what Israelis do, it reaffirms their guilt.
The book is thick with the kind of pseudo-intellectual jargon that has become the hallmark of postcolonial academic orthodoxy. Terms like “Peircean qualisign,” “semiotic ideologies,” and “authenticity-conferring consumption” are deployed to mask what is, at its core, an ideologically rigid thesis: that everything Israelis touch—yes, even hummus—is evidence of settler-colonial theft.
But what’s missing is basic logic.
The entire book assumes as obvious that Israelis adopting hummus as Israeli is part of their settler-colonial nature.
But what are "American" foods? Hot dogs, hamburgers, apple pie - all of them originated in Germany! Was that cultural appropriation - or simply that Americans fell in love with those foods and adopted them as their own? Why, with Israel, is the starting point of the analysis that Israelis are evil, and all the following conclusions are based on that bigoted premise? Why is it not possible that Israelis just went crazy over falafel in pita and hummus, sabich and shawarma, Israeli couscous and shakshuka, not particularly caring if their origins are Arab or Mizrahi or Israeli? The only people who refer to foods as "masculine" or "feminine" are the academics who apply their own biases on their subjects, because normal people don't think of most foods as gendered.
Hirsch tells a story about how she grew up in Jaffa and was not aware of excellent Arab hummus stores near her house, and assumes that all Israelis are equally ignorant of their Arab neighbors. Maybe - or maybe she grew up as a left-wing, secular Ashkenazi who didn't know any Mizrahi Jews either - the types of people who would know the Arab shops (if they didn't keep kosher)?
This book isn’t about understanding; it’s about indicting.
The premise is fixed: Israel is guilty. Every chapter, every citation, every theoretical flourish exists to reinforce that assumption.
This is what much of academia has become today: Not a place for discovery, but for ideological confirmation.
And here’s the kicker:
This anti-Israel book was funded by the Israel Science Foundation—that is, by the Israeli taxpayer.
So if there’s any true “cultural crime” here, it’s not the hummus.
It’s the fact that Israelis are subsidizing the production of literature that pathologizes their existence.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Elder of Ziyon
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