Comments on: Hummus: is it Israeli or Arab?

By: Mr. Egypt

Mr. Egypt — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:44:37 +0000

Ahahaha… Jews acting oh so stereotypical, humus is a wonderful metaphor, next thing you know they will trick a powerful country to support their occupation of humus. Maybe prop settlements to garnish the humus. Just remember that falsehood by its nature is meant to perish.

By: ala

ala — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:39:16 +0000

R Mc D thanks for the comment, i would go with you, and i would say that quality of tahini what makes it special, if you could make good tahini i would call it the fantastic scottish tahini, who found it is dead, we have to make sure that we make a good tahini to respect the founders of tahini, and to give our consumers the best and healthiest food, naturality of sesamy seeds, and cold graunding makes the richiest tahini ever.
sandy thanks for the comment , lebanone has a special food, we all like it.
jabbathanks for the comment, nice to have you.
have nice himmous made from the best tahini.
love to all
ala

By: Sandy

Sandy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:25:14 +0000

Hummus is Lebanese no doubt ,
every country tried to have their own version of Hummus , and I tried most of them , the Lebanese was is the best(maybe because we Invented it ?) the first canned hummus was made by a lebanese company named Cortas in 1956, Lebanon is filing for the trademark to the hummus and Tabbouli…….

By: jabba

jabba — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:11:37 +0000

so what yall trying to say is humus is an israeli dish?
thats retarted thats like saying a taco part of an israeli dish

By: R McD

R McD — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:44:34 +0000

I think to properly ask this question you need a clear idea of what makes a food a national dish. I don’t think it’s to do with who invented it, or ate it first. I’m Scottish, and one of our national dishes hagis was probably invented by the English. I don’t think that stops it from being Scottish. What seems to be important is that people of that nationality eat it, have a history of eating it, and consider it to be a part of their culture. On these terms I think both Isrelis and Arabs can say that the dish is part of their national cuisine. There isn’t anything wrong with that – many countries share distinctive dishes such as Pakistan-India or Norway and Sweeden.

By: ala

ala — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:56:39 +0000

pupularity of hummus is not a country wise thing, here in nablus, palestine we have one or two special hummus makers, you might not fined the same hummus anywhere in the world, the same story can be true for lebanon and israel, or anywhere else. the acceptance of taste deffeirse from a place to another, like in india they love spicy food, yet we dont. therefore for a good evaluation for the best hummus in the world i would suggest a worldwide compitition, the winner will carry the belt of hummus and he can assume that he is the first to make hummus, and this could be every four years.

By: Insomniac

Insomniac — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:03:37 +0000

Where I live, hummus without Olive Oil doesn’t exist. Olives grow mainly in the Mediterranean basin, and anyone MUST try the Olives and Olive oil of south Lebanon, Delicious

Anyhow, it was in the Levant (currently known as Syria-Lebanon-Palestine-Israel) that hummus has always been eaten, in those small villages where grandmothers make the best food. So if indeed some “israelis” have been in that region ages ago, then they are also the parents of this awesome dish, otherwise they came here lately and making and eating it.

But REALLY, it doesn’t matter, it’s food, and it’s delicious here because of the nature of the land, it’s amazing what this land produces, in terms of good thinkers and great trees, no wonder all god messengers came from here, and no wonder it’s a conflict zone !

By: Ari

Ari — Sat, 16 May 2009 12:36:58 +0000

I belive food dont belongs to anyone but on the other hand on a text from the article; ” . There’s no way it was brought here by European Jews…”

I think around 50 % of the population in Israel has middle eastern jewish bakground. it has always been there with the jews like any other people living in middle east..

anyway.. food is food and everyone creates their own style of something..

whats next, the war over clothes?

By: Cush

Cush — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:41:24 +0000

That we can make food political is just so poor. Someone said earlier “why not make it one of our agreements.”
Speculate about it’s history or not we all seem to enjoy it “hummus.” I haven’t a clue from whence it came I am simply glad that it did.
As far as I’m concerned thank- God for creativity of His people but I thank him above all for the chick-peas, etc. To him alone belongs the glory.

By: Johny

Johny — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:45:33 +0000

You are just too funny when you mention that a discussion is pointless about where hummus originated from. Without caring about the chickpea in general or how people used to eat it once upon the time or the way it was mentioned in the talmud, the hummus you eat origin from arabs. This certain meal was created by arabs and what kind of damn discussion are you talking about. Nothing to be discussed, PERIOD… Pasta is from italy, no one claims anything different because other people used the same ingredients to create a different dish. Im also suprised that nobody mention Lebanon. Hummus is very often attributed to Lebanon,. where the best hummus in the world is and everybody knows it.

By: Stevestarland

Stevestarland — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:22:17 +0000

I agree with the comment from Yochanan on July 18th, Americans are notorius for mispronouncing words from other cultures then adapting the mispronounced word into the “English” language – Americans even mispronounce English (from England) words, then insist people from England speak with an “accent.”
Another food that is even more mispronounced is tabouleh. How did they come up with the pronunciation “lee” from the letters l-e-h?

By: ala tamam

ala tamam — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:05:43 +0000

dear shooky
it seems that you are struggiling , it is good to know all about hommus tahina falafel and everything else, plus it is fantastic to know peaple and be as freindly as you could, yet differences in openions are not suppose to be fighting base, weather hummus is arabic or hebrew, chickpeas english or chinees i do not care, all i care a bout is to make a good tahina, to satisfy good peaple like you,
i am proude of being palestenian but i can be a freind to anyone and respect every nationality on earth, we have been in the occupation now for about fifty years, we live a terripple live compairing to many other countries, but i know who to plame for this,
the bottom line is love life life loves you.
love hommus i will make you the best tahina
thanking you all a rround

By: shooky

shooky — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:53:55 +0000

Dana – you seems like you didn’t bother to read the post. BTW, “hummus” is the name of chickpeas in Hebrew too.

By: dana

dana — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:58:57 +0000

hummus is`arabic, the word hummus is chickpea in arabic….isrealis took our land and now they want to take our food?

By: shooky

shooky — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:37:08 +0000

Nadia -

I already explained why I think this discussion is pointless.

But since you seem to have that interest in the origins of these foods, feel free to read the sources I referred in this post and others, as well as the proper entries in any Encyclopedia (hummus, falafel, tahini etc.).

Since the occupation by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, the of the middle-east is mostly populated by Muslim Arabs. Of course, this isn’t the first time the region was concurred by Arab armies. It first happened in the 7th century, than several other times during the middle ages. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_East#The_Arab_Middle_East

As far as historians and archeologists can tell, Hummus was first eaten by the Crusaders, falafel by the Copts and tahini comes from east Africa. They where all brought and eaten all around the middle-east at least since the middle ages, which was a time when the region was ethnically and religiously heterogeneous.

So the culture of the region, including the it’s culinarity, has many roots – including those of the people from which the Arab occupiers occupied these places – because if they were empty you wouldn’t need armies to take it by force.