For the Zionist movement going as far back as the early 20th century, the construction of a food culture mirrored that of a nation. It was meant to breathe into the Zionist identity in Palestine a sense of historical connection to the land.
In an effort to establish themselves as the "natives", European Jewish settlers adopted the cultural characteristics and customs of Palestine’s local population.
[...] [B]eginning in the 1920s, Jewish settlers embraced the culinary symbols and practices of the native Palestinians. The list was extensive, from Sabra (from the Arabic sabr, prickly pear, appropriated to mean the "new Jew" in Palestine) to Jaffa oranges, all the way to falafel, tahini and hummus. All are representative of the Palestinian production cycle, life and culture.
Unlike European Zionists, Palestinians could anchor their national identity in an existing society that, among other things, had its own cuisine and was deeply entwined with the region’s culture and history.
That provided Zionism with a set of native recipes - literally - to facilitate the construction of an "indigenous identity" for European Jews with varied cultural backgrounds, none of which organically linked to the region.
A settler-colonial endeavour, the Zionist notion of "nativisation" inevitably changed from adopting the local culture, including the food, to claiming it as its own.
In the first Zionist cookbooks from the 1930s onwards, Palestinian dishes were referred to as "Israeli". When the evidence was lacking, as always is, they were attributed to Mizrahi Jews who arrived in the Zionist state from Arab countries.
To establish historical legitimacy, some of the culinary appropriation was justified as another "return". The return this time is not only to the so-called ancestral land of Eretz Yisrael after two millennia of exile, but to the ancient Jewish/Biblical customs that Palestinian Arabs have preserved since the 6th century.
For instance, hummus, goes the claim, was an ancient Biblical dish and has roots in the Biblical words hamits and himtsa (chickpeas). The words, however, are likely a reference to a blend of fermented chickpeas used as animal fodder in ancient Canaan.
Moving from adopting the local culture to appropriating it could not have been done without the denial of the culture’s originators.
Native Palestinians were erased both physically and symbolically from the Jewish state’s collective memory and public spaces.
Those who resisted the erasure and remained in their land now face dispersion and control.
As such, the acknowledgement of a rooted Palestinian culture, let alone admitting that Zionism needed that culture to build a separate political entity and identity in Palestine, is threatening to Israel’s assumed historical entitlement and claims of indigeneity.
That dynamic has also created a painful paradox where the Zionist superior and racist attitude towards Palestinians had to go hand in hand with the adoption of their "inferior" culture, including their local cuisine.
— Emad Moussa, "The politics of hummus: Israel's search for cultural identity," 2023.
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