Showing posts with label cultural appropriation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cultural appropriation. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 02, 2023

According to Palestine Chronicle, Palestinians now celebrate "Nakba Day" as a happy holiday.

For Palestinians, the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian homeland, known as the Nakba, is not simply about mourning what has been lost, and the tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people ever since. 

It is also a celebration of life, of culture, of the past and the present, and a strong message of a rooted nation with a strong sense of peoplehood to a young generation that has grown up stateless or in exile. 

This Palestinian community in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis has done just that. The elders of the community led an event that exhibited the young talents of the area, their artwork, poetry and embroidery. 

Can you imagine morphing Yom Hashoah (or Tisha B'av before the Messiah comes)  into a day of happiness?

"Nakba Day" is not really about memorializing and mourning a "catastrophe." The first one was celebrated only 25 years ago, after all - for the 50th anniversary of Israel's founding.

Nakba Day isn't a day of sadness, and it never was. It began and remains primarily a day of protest against Israel's existence. It is meant to recast the rebirth of the Jewish state into something terrible. It is meant to blunt Yom HaAtzmaut by choosing the anniversary of Israel's independence - not the anniversary of Palestinians leaving Haifa or Jaffa, or Deir Yassin, or Lydda. 

As with everything else  about Palestinian nationalism, it is about getting the world to hate Israel.

There isn't a separate "Palestinian celebration day." As far as I can tell, Palestinians don't have parades in Ramallah on their "independence day" in November.  

Nakba Day is a day to get the world to pay attention to Palestinian temper tantrums about Israel.

As such, Nakba Day has become the most important day on the Palestinian calendar. Demanding Israel's destruction to the world is the Palestinian national holiday. And since there is no other day on the calendar to celebrate Palestinian culture, the residents of Khan Younis chose the only real national holiday they have.

And since food plays an essential role in sustaining Palestinian culture and making it accessible to everyone, freshly made Palestinian bread, known as shrak, was shared among the community, along with freshly brewed coffee, done according to Palestinian Bedouin traditions. 



Shrak is not "Palestinian bread." Most sites say it is Jordanian, Bedouin or simply Levantine, but no one says it is "Palestinian."

It always amazes me how Palestinian Arabs who are so quick to claim that their cuisine is being "stolen" eagerly claim others' cuisines  as their own. Whomever came up with the idea of psychological projection would have a field day with Palestinians.





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Friday, April 21, 2023



Remember a couple of years ago how people were so upset that Israeli Gal Gadot was playing Cleopatra in a biopic (now set to be released sometime in 2023)? She was accused of "whitewashing" the role, with some claiming that Cleopatra was black or part Arab, and others responding that she was of white Macedonian ancestry, and it was not at all inappropriate for a Jewish woman to play someone else whose ancestry was Levantine. 

There was more than a little antisemitism in that controversy - Gadot being from Israel was the real issue, as we saw with the protests in the Arab world about her Wonder Woman role. 

Now, Egyptians are turning this issue on its head, thanks to an upcoming Netflix documentary series that casts a black woman as Cleopatra, and claims that she was indeed black.


A Netflix docudrama depicting Queen Cleopatra as black has sparked an uproar in Egypt.

‘Queen Cleopatra’ stars British actress Adele James, who is of mixed heritage, as the title character.

But Egyptian academics insists that Cleopatra, who was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC, was light-skinned and of European descent, not black.

So intense is the backlash that an Egyptian lawyer has reportedly filed a complaint in an attempt to prevent the show from airing in Egypt, accusing the film of violating media laws and aiming to “erase the Egyptian identity”.
This doesn't come close to describing the pure racism coming out of Egypt, far out of proportion to just complaining about Cleopatra's origins. 

Asharq reports:

Representative Saboura El-Sayed, a member of the Egyptian Parliament, submitted a request for a briefing to the Speaker of Parliament, Counselor Hanafi Jabali, calling for a ban on broadcasting the Netflix platform in Egypt, in light of the promotional advertisement for the documentary film “Queen Cleopatra”, which is scheduled to be broadcast on the digital platform next May 9.

Saboura explained to Asharq that..."this incident is an attempt to steal and distort history, as there are major plans seeking to undermine, demolish and steal the Egyptian state."

She pointed out that Netflix's promotion of Cleopatra as a queen of African descent feeds the ideas of the "Afrocentric" movement, which adopts the idea that all civilizations of the world included people of African descent before their dispersal, stressing that the film is trying to change the history of ancient Egypt and falsify established historical data.

But while the Gadot issue complained she was too white and this one says the actress is too black, there is one thing in common: both of them have elements of old fashioned Jew-hatred. 

One Egyptian expert went off into a crazed antisemitic conspiracy theory:
Egyptologist Dr. Wassim El-Sisi said, "This film is a scheme that carries political goals, which is the expulsion of Jews of African descent from Europe and America to Egypt."

Al-Sisi continued, to Asharq, "They want to convince Jews of African descent that their ancestors are the owners of the Egyptian civilization, and that those present in Egypt are the sons of the invaders, Arabs, Ikhshidids and others, but it is their misfortune that scientific research has proven that more than 86% of Egyptians carry the genes of Tutankhamun.

(Update): There is a variant on that conspiracy theory in  popular Egyptian site Al Masry Al Youm, where they say that Zionists are trying to expel Blacks from America by convincing them that Egypt is really theirs and they should return there and get rid of the Arab invaders.

El-Sisi is a well-known figure in Egypt, an antisemitic nutcase who says that Jews control all aspects of the United States - and that Mohammed was Egyptian, not Arab. But his craziness gets airplay in Egypt. 

He isn't the only racist and antisemite weighing in on this in Egypt. Al Masry al Youm said the idea that Cleopatra was black came from Jewish "pressure groups" for their own nefarious but unstated purposes. 





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, January 12, 2023









Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 




Sunday, January 08, 2023


Palestinian Arabs falsely complaining that Israeli Jews are "culturally appropriating" their cuisine have become so common that they are almost a cliche. 

But at least some of these accusations cross the line from absurd into antisemitism.

Here's an article this past weekend from L'Orient Today by Emmanuel Haddad:
After hummus, falafel and so many other flagship dishes of Palestinian and Levantine cuisine, knefeh nabulsi is the latest victim of appropriation by Israel.

This delicious dessert, which originated in Nablus and is named after the main ingredient — nabulsi cheese — has been incorporated into a more-than-dubious recipe developed by Pizza Hut Israel.

For Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, the affront is threefold: "First against the knefeh, then against pizza... And then, against the taste!"

The flavor is as off-putting as it is bitter for Salma Serry, historian of Near Eastern cuisine. The Israeli pizza-knefeh fits perfectly into the definition of appropriation she offers on Sufra Kitchen, the online platform she created to decolonize regional cuisines:

"Appropriation [is the] inappropriate adoption of a group's food without giving it credit, especially for commercial gain. Example: Israeli restaurants profiting from falafel, knefeh or hummus without mentioning their original culture."
The word "inappropriate" in that definition does some heavy lifting here. The USA has lots of restaurants that serve pizza or tacos; is it cultural appropriation to mention them without the prefixes "Italian" or "Mexican?" Apparently, only in Israel, and only for Jews, is cooking food from surrounding countries considered a crime without mentioning their origin - and in the case of foods from Arab countries, the origin in often murky and hardly ever "Palestinian. "

The Israeli Pizza Hut chain never once claimed that "knafeh pizza" is an Israeli food. On the contrary, when they introduced the dish last month, their press release said, “Pizza Hut recognized the unrealized potential of this irresistible Middle Eastern food, and decided to make its own version.” 

And Pizza Hut is not calling it "knafeh" but "knafeh pizza." It is a (perhaps bizarre) combination of the two, but no one claims it is authentic knafeh - or authentic pizza, for that matter. 

The article goes on:
Salma Serry says she often hears denials of this culinary appropriation, defended as the natural spread of cuisine among different communities.

"Of course, food is meant to be shared. But when there is active violence that takes away a group's cultural identity and denies its heritage, its land and the food it produces while manipulating its history, then it becomes problematic,” she said. “In the specific case of Palestine, it's not about sharing; it's about taking and not giving back."
This is simply not true. Israeli chefs and cookbook writers happily describe where Israeli cuisine comes from. No one is "stealing" anything. Read Janna Gur's "A Short Introduction to Israeli Food" preface to her cookbook Shuk where she concisely describes the Israeli food scene's influences, from dozens of ethnic cultures in the Israeli melting pot but also from the neighboring Palestinians. Yes, sometimes non-experts will lazily say that some Arab dishes are Israeli, but they mean that they are popular in Israel: no one says that they originate there, unless they really do, as in the case of falafel in pita.  Similarly, there was much angst when Haaretz once said that shawarma is "Israeli street food" - yet it is, just as much ss pizza is American street food.

Here's a 1949 advertisement for a Tel Aviv restaurant selling "oriental food."


No Israeli ever claimed hummus was natively Israeli.

The real irony is that Palestinians are the ones who have culturally appropriated Middle East foods. They really have claimed to have invented most popular Levantine foods like hummus and falafel, and here they claim to have created knafeh. They may have invented knafeh nabulsi, which uses cheese made in Nablus, but knafeh itself has much murkier origins.

Why does no one accuse Palestinians of cultural appropriation for claiming foods that were invented elsewhere? 

Because they are not Jews. 

There are two reasons that articles like this descend from simple lies into antisemitism. 

One is that they are saying that while every nation's cuisine is an amalgam from many places, only Israeli Jews are accused of "theft" - even though Israeli foodies freely admit and eagerly explain where all their dishes originate.

The other is that these articles deny the or even existence of Mizrahi Jews on the Israeli food scene, even though they are the primary source.

The L'Orient article includes this falsehood:
For chef Kattan, the case of hummus is emblematic of the broader problem:

"It was the very first dish appropriated by the Israelis as early as 1948. Originally, the Zionist project was marked by European-style colonialism that denied the Arabness of Palestine and its land. But when they went to eat at the homes of Palestinians who survived the Nakba — during which 580 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground — they said to themselves, ‘This chickpea puree is not bad!’”
Jews in the Middle East have been eating hummus for centuries. This is a Palestinian chef erasing hundreds of years of Jewish history, and claiming that Jews have no right to be in the region. 

Here is a Palestine Post article about the popularity of falafel among Palestinian Jews in 1940 - and it interestingly describes the uniquely Israeli version of falafel in pita even then. The writer interviews a Jew who was born in Yemen, went to Egypt and brought his falafel skills to Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street.




These articles invariably downplay the role of Mizrahi Jews in bringing with them the bulk of what is now called Israeli cuisine.

Yes, that is antisemitism. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Saturday, January 07, 2023

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How can Israel win the Palestinian conflict? Historian explains
Do the Abraham Accords and the focus on Ukraine and China change things? Not really. The Abraham Accords are great, both in of themselves and because they got Netanyahu in 2020 to abandon his plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Ukraine and China reduce the spotlight on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, always a good thing. But Israel’s thriving relations with the UAE and other states barely diminishes the Palestinian campaign of delegitimization. And whenever the Palestinian Authority or Hamas wishes the spotlight to return, it will do so, instantly.

How should Israel handle the international spotlight?
By recognizing it as a fact of life and finding ways to deal with it. When Hamas decides to launch missiles into Israel, it knows it will get clobbered militarily but will gain international political support. Likewise, Israel knows it will get clobbered internationally, so it should take advantage of the crisis to send a very strong message to the Gazan population that it has lost the war. Ultimately, media coverage matters less than winning on the ground.

Practically speaking, how does Israel win?
I prefer to posit Israel victory as a policy goal, without going into detailed strategy and tactics. First, it’s premature to get into specifics. Second, delving into these topics distracts from establishing the policy goal.

That said, Israel has an extraordinary range of levers due to its vastly greater power than the Palestinians – and not just military and economic.

One creative example: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would probably love to add al-Aqsa to his collection of Islamic sanctities, especially at a time when Tehran challenges Saudi control of Mecca and Medina. How about Israel opening negotiations on this topic with Riyadh, offering the jewel in the Palestinian Authority’s crown in return for full diplomatic relations and a change in the status quo on the Temple Mount?

Can Israel defeat Hamas without reoccupying Gaza?
Again, I prefer not to discuss strategy and tactics. But, as you ask, here is one tactic: Israel announces that a single missile attack from Gaza means a one-day border closure: no water, food, medicine, or fuel crosses from it to Gaza. Two missiles means two days, and so forth. I guarantee this would rapidly improve Hamas’s behavior.

But isn’t the delegitimization issue a struggle against those in the West, too? Don’t they have to be defeated? Horrors, no. Plus, that would be impossible. But it is also not necessary, for they are mere followers. Imagine the Palestinians acknowledge their defeat and truly accept the Jewish state; this would pull the rug out from leftist anti-Zionism. Sustaining a more-Catholic-than-the-pope stance is tough to keep up. Israel is lucky that its principal enemy is so small and weak.

Over time, do Palestinians increasingly accept Israel?
Former minister Yuval Steinitz just told me that 75% of Palestinians have come to terms with the State of Israel and live normal lives, but I wonder. A recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll found that “72% of the public (84% in the Gaza Strip and 65% in the West Bank) say they are in favor of forming armed groups such as the Lions’ Den, which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services; 22% are against that.”

Yes, there’s a general calm. In the hotel where we are meeting, the Dan Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, the Palestinian staff goes quietly about its work and is not stabbing anyone. But at a time of crisis, say a Hamas rocket attack, I would avoid this or most other Jerusalem hotels.

Israel’s previous leadership seems to accept Micah Goodman’s idea of “shrinking the conflict.” Do you?
No, I see it as just another in a long line of attempts to finesse the difficult work of attaining victory. Prior ideas included expelling the Palestinians either by force or voluntarily, the Jordan-is-Palestine scheme, erecting more fences, finding a new Palestinian leadership, demanding good governance, implementing the Road Map, funding a Marshall Plan, imposing a trusteeship, establishing joint security forces, splitting the Temple Mount, leasing the land, withdrawing unilaterally, and so on. None worked; none will work. Defeat and victory remain imperative.

What about Iran? The Palestinian terrorist groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, get support from Iran. If Iran’s regime falls, will that matter?
Regime change in Iran has vast implications for the Middle East but not so much for the Palestinian war on Israel. The mullahs’ political collapse will not close down the Palestinians’ conviction that rejectionism works, that “revolution until victory” will prevail, that they can eliminate the Jewish state. Israel cannot outsource victory.
Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel
A Russian former senior official argued the war in Ukraine became a very profitable battlefield for "black-market transplantologists," in a report picked up by several Russian media outlets.

In an interview with Russian outlet Moskovskij Komsomolets, retired Major General of Police, and ex-head of the Russian Central Bureau of Interpol Vladimir Ovchinsky claimed the Armed Forces of Ukraine are delivered human organs harvested from the dead and wounded in the war, people who are still alive, such as Russian prisoners of war, and even Ukrainian civilians who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When asked where the organs are transported to, Ovchinsky said: "The most effective and successful 'workshops' are located in four countries - Turkey, India, Israel and South Korea."

"Israel is also a leader in the field of innovative medical techniques, which are used throughout the world. The clinics of this country successfully perform organ transplant operations."

The former advisor to the interior minister of Russia also added that large amounts of medical equipment, including containers for transporting human organs, were sent to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion.

When asked what they do with the bodies, he replied: "They burn them like in Auschwitz or Dachau, they are after all heirs of Hitler. There is also information about mobile crematoria to burn the remains of people whose organs were removed."
Taxpayer Dollars Could Reach Terrorists Under Biden Admin Aid Changes, McCaul Says
Biden Treasury Department authorizations, announced late last year, rolled back safeguards on U.S. humanitarian aid, a move that is likely to pave the way for millions in taxpayer dollars to reach "designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," according to a congressional foreign policy leader.

The authorizations, which will make it easier for aid dollars to be allocated in conflict zones and areas where terrorist activity is taking place are generating concerns in Congress. Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that in its rush to push aid dollars out the door, the Biden administration is relaxing longstanding safeguards meant to stop taxpayer aid from enriching malign regimes and terrorism supporters.

"By relaxing longstanding basic restrictions on the provision of aid to countries subject to U.S. sanctions, [the] action by the Biden administration increases the likelihood some of our assistance funding will go to designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," McCaul said in a statement. "I urge the administration to reverse this decision."

As part of this recalibration, the Treasury Department issued authorizations that will inject U.S. taxpayer dollars into areas that have historically been subject to strict sanctions, including in China, Cuba, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Iran, and other conflict areas, according to congressional officials who reviewed the new initiative.

The Treasury Department changes, these sources said, remove longstanding restrictions that prevent U.S. aid from being injected into sanctioned areas. To skirt these restrictions, the United States will funnel taxpayer dollars to United Nations organizations working in these conflict zones.

The aid policy also protects U.N. organizations from repercussions should U.S. aid dollars end up in the hands of terrorists or other sanctioned entities, like the Taliban or Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, according to one congressional official tracking the matter.

Samantha Power, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) administrator, acknowledged in a statement issued late last year that the new aid practices will grant blanket immunity to organizations operating in conflict areas.

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