Travellers to Israel will find it hard to find ‘Jewish food’, alleges journalist Sarah Treleaven for BBC Travel (article not visible if you are in the UK). That’s because the Zionists appropriated ‘Palestinian’ dishes in order to construct an ‘authentic’ national narrative! Mizrahim and Sephardim who have been eating these foods for millennia are, not for the first time, invisible in the BBC’s world view.
“One of the biggest shocks for many foreign visitors to Israel is the lack of familiar Jewish cuisine. Where are the smoked salmon, bagels and cream cheese at breakfast? What about the delis that define Jewish cuisine from Montreal to Los Angeles? Or the kugel (a casserole made from egg noodles or potato), gefilte fish (an appetizer made from poached fish) and matzoh ball soup served at Jewish tables around the world?
Edward Solomon has given Point of No Return permission to quote his rebuttal:
“This article is replete with out-and-out lies and falsehoods. Based on Sarah Treleaven’s limited and blinkered view of Jewish history and cuisine, Israeli food should consist of lokshen, bagels, gefilte fish, matzah ball soup, kugel, chopped liver and cholent.
The rich and varied panoply of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish foods, such as sabikh, tagine, tbit, kubbah, loubiah, kahi, and countless other dishes of Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Indian, and Iraqi origins documented by writers such as Linda Dangoor and Claudia Roden, cooked and eaten in Israel, are completely glossed over in the interest of presenting a one-sided, politicised narrative that paints the Zionist Jews as Ashkenazic interlopers who stole Palestinian dishes to claim for their own.
This article is misleading and shortsighted in its attempt to distort Jewish history and cuisine to suit a distinctly Leftist, anti-Zionist narrative.”
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