I first came across hummus and Falafel and other such dishes when I worked at the Bagdad House restaurant in 1966. I worked out for myself, around 1980, how to make hummus because I couldn’t find a recipe – no www then – and once made 300 portions of hummus (1984?) and 300 portions of chilli sin carne, sold it all in pitta bread with salad at a pop festival, in a day! I didn’t make the pitta – a bit of a mission – but I did make money, and friends.

I froze down the hummus, and the chilli, in ice cream tubs, the week before, and took the defrosting bricks to the camp site. I used often to freeze it, but it doesn’t keep well frozen for more than a couple of weeks. Unlike the chilli, which freezes great.

I won’t blame you for editing this

I come here to read about hummus. As an American living abroad in a city where I can’t find good hummus (though — there has to be some out there somewhere, doesn’t there?), I’m determined to MAKE good hummus for me and my son to enjoy.

Shooky, keep up the good work. I hope I can come to Israel some day and try the local hummus (and baba ghanouj, and falafel, and ful, and whatever else is worth trying!). But if I can’t, I am grateful for this blog for giving me the information I need to try to make my own.

This is all very interesting, only what evidence is there that Palestinians are the decedents of Canaanites?

We do know that today’s Egyptians, for example, aren’t the decedents of ancient Egyptians but mostly of Saudi tribes who conquered Egypt in the 7th century AD, in the name of Islam.

In the 10th century AD Rashi (Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzhaki) wrote: “why is the Torah starting with the story of creation? Because one day, when Jewish people will return to the land of Israel, there will be people who’d say this land isn’t theirs…”. Now forget the rest of the explanation, which is the Jewish narrative – can you think of a Palestinian equivalent?

Shortly after Rashi wrote this, the land of Israel was conquered by the Crusaders, then by Mamluks, then by Ottomans. So maybe, just maybe, some of the Palestinians are descendents of these people too?

On the other hand, we have 3000 years of sequent Hebrew literature mentioning the land of Israel and Zion. There are also 2500-3000 year relics, including old synagogues in Israel. Can you think of Palestinian equivalents?

The name “Palestine” BTW, derives from the name of the “Plishtim” (Philistine), Phoenicians who came here from Lebanon and are mentioned in the bible. Jerusalem, is also mentioned hundreds of times in the bible – but not once in the Koran.

Throughout the 18-19th centuries, a number of pilgrims and explorers came to Israel, and wrote about it and drew maps of it. Non of them mentioned a mass of Arab people who were living here. They all found SOME local Arab populations, just as they found my Ancestors, in Jerusalem and Safad.

So you see, we can argue about this for all eternity. I say: in my heart I believe this land is “mine”, but this does not give me the right to hurt other people. I demand equal right for everybody who lives here. Also, I believe a reasonable and fair solution should be found, to compensate all the people who were hurt, deported, evicted, etc.

I guess we are sort of stuck together. So it’s more reasonable to think of a way we can live here together.

I’m happy to hear we’re in agreement about the traumas of land confiscations, etc. I know there are many, many Israeli’s like you, but it’s nice to hear it, again.

As for the origins of Palestinians, they did not migrate from what is Saudi Arabia in the last few centuries. Or, anyway, the overwhelming majority of them didn’t. Palestinians are the descendants of people who have been living in the land we call Palestine/Israel from time immemorial (no apologies to Joan Peters) and those who came and went over the centuries. Please remember a couple of things 1) borders were fluid until the twentieth century. People live in Jerusalem for a few years, Cairo the next, Beirut, Damascus, etc. Peasants surely were not so mobile, though they did move as necessity dictated, too. The Levant has always been a crossroads. 2) If one is to put any credence in biblical accounts of history (and one would be advised not to put too much credence in them, one reads in the Hebrew Bible that Moses encountered the peoples of Canaan as he migrated to the “Promised Land.” Whichever exile the ancient Hebrews supposedly suffered (yes, I’m challenging biblical historiography in hopes that a better source for historical knowledge will emerge), there is no reason to believe that the Canaanites, the Samaritans, the Philistines, or whichever peoples were living on the land, were also removed from it, thereby making one of the most important geopolitical positions on earth back then (as now) empty of people. Palestinians trace their ancestry to that time and before, even claiming some Hebrew parentage. Is there some mythologizing? Of course. That’s how national identities are formed. But, there’s no real reason to doubt that a people who have been extant on the land for countless generations wouldn’t legitimately trace their heritage to the earliest days. Now, while there were “Arab” tribes/clans/peoples in Palestine for thousands of years (again, look at the Bible), the land surely wasn’t “Arabized” until the second or third generation after the Prophet Muhammed. And, even then, there were still patches of non-Arab peoples living there, up until the first political Zionist colonies were established in the last fifth of the 19th century. Interestingly, my family does trace its origins to the Arabian peninsula, but has had a continuous presence around Gaza since at least 1100 AD. It doesn’t take much to guess that they ate some form of hummus, too.

I see it as an internal American dispute – between Jewish Americans and Palestinians Americans such as Hishmeh .

About the Iraqi synagogue – it’s a true story. Israelis – just like their neighbors – did many stupid things over the years. But this has nothing to do with the right of one man or another over territories and foods.

That said, Hishmeh’s daughter is correct that American Jews do mostly think that falafel and hummus are *uniquely* Israeli foods invented in Israel by Jews. It’s not the deliberate conspiracy Hishmeh imagines it as and Israelis mostly laugh when they hear it but it was what I believed for quite a while.

So it’s a reasonable point, but could be expressed just as well without the conspiracy theories about the Mossad bombing Iraqi synagogues and that charming cartoon of the hook-nosed haredi. (That’s quite a career Nino Jose Heredia has carved out for himself in Dubai!)