Hummus, a savoury dip made from chickpeas with olive oil, spices and often flavoured with tehina, a sesame seed paste, has widely become a popular snack food around the world. In Israel, it is taken on pita as a standard appetiser at family get-togethers and weddings, etc.
Lebanese businessmen are making a legal claim that would designate hummus as traditional to Lebanon. That would make it easier for them to sue to prevent companies in Israel and other nations from marketing the popular chickpea-and-olive-oil spread as their own.
The Association of Lebanese Industrialists wants recognition from the European Union of hummus and other culinary specialties as traditional Lebanese dishes.
Other foods of interest include tabouleh, a mixture of bulgur, parsley, mint and other herbs, and arak an anise-flavored alcoholic drink, and
The group’s complaint covers all hummous producing countries, but what the Lebanese find objectionable is the success of Israeli companies claiming Hummous as their own,”
Fady Abboud, president of the association claims “So many of our specialties are being marketed now as Israeli traditional dishes” and “among the most famous of these is hummus.”
The 65-year-old association hopes the EU will award legal protection to the foods in the same way it gave Greek milk producers exclusive use of the name feta for their crumbly, white cheese in 2005. That ruling gave feta protection in the EU that’s similar to France’s claim over champagne and Italy’s over parmesan.
“It’s the same with tabouleh; it’s even the same with our national drink, which is arak,” Abboud said. “It’s even exported under the name `arak’ from Israel.”
The culinary dispute may extend beyond the Mideast.
In the U.S. alone, sales of hummus totaled $192 million last year, according to PepsiCo Inc., the world’s biggest snack maker.
Osem Investments Ltd. — maker of Israel’s best-selling Tzabar hummus, a supermarket staple — declined to discuss the food’s origin. Although Israelis don’t claim to have invented hummus, though they’re proud of how much of a fixture it’s become on the national menu.
Hummus is a transliteration of the Arabic word for chickpeas. The Oxford English Dictionary says the word was first absorbed into English from Turkish.
Is the Lebasense claim valid? Hummus certainly has a long history in Arab or middle Eastern Cuisine, but not neccessarily Lebanese. It is fairly generic to the whole region where chickpeas grow.
Ashkenazaic families have a tradition to eat boiled and spiced chickpeas at the pre circumcision party held on the first Friday night prior to the circumcision. The custom is certainly not Lebanese, and aparently a primitive magical / homeoopathic rite based on the visual simularity between the scrotum and the chickpea. It would appear that hummous was not unknown in the Ashkenazi kitchen.
Mrs Beaton referst to that British staple of fried fish as being fish in the Jewish tradition, as it apprently reached Britain with Spanish and Portugese exiles who settled in London following Cromwell’s revolution. Maybe Jews, or the Portugese should appeal to referenced to Fish & Chips as being an English food?
There are a number of Hummous brands and flavors in my local supermarket, refrring to various neighboring countries, to Bedhouin hummous and to the hummous of the Druse minority living on the Golan and to the Christian Arabs of Abu Gosh. Are these authentic? probably sometimes yes and sometimes no.
Perhaps Pizza does have Italian roots, but the type eaten world wide is an American culinary invention. The Americans might like to call a chip a chip and not a French Fry, to avoid these law suites.
Israel cuisine is varied, reflecting the origins of the people living here and the travels of the wandering Jew. Some Israeli Jews come from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Morroco, Tunisia and Iraq. Maybe they ate hummous for generations. Some Jewish families, such as those of Pekiin in the Galilee never left, and were here in Temple times. A lot of Israel’s Arabs also came in the past 100 years or so, attracted by work possibilities. Some have long-established ties however. Abu Gosh is a Christian Arab town in Israel, having what is widely regarded as the best hummous. Are they less deserving of the paste than the Lebanese?
Some combinations such as the common lunch sandwich of an Arab stye Pita bread cpread with hummus, tehina and stuffed with turkey shnitzel and topped off with a pickled cucumber, is clearly a hybrid of Eastern European and Middle Eastern cuisine that could only have happened in Israel. Arak has been made by Galilee Winery for over 100 years using fennel from the galilean hills.
Ulike many Internationally marketed foods such as scotch whiskey, french wine and various cheeses, hummous is made locally and varies widely as it has limited shelf life. Israeli hummous contains preservatives and is sold in vacuum sealed containers, and the introduction of hummmous to wetern palates was by Israeli firms.
Can Lebanese take action against Israel without recognizing her de facto? Could concentrating on the serious issues such as authentic hummous recipes be used as a substitute for kidnappings and scud missiles over the border? Maybe the true test is when I will be able to go to Beirut on an Israeli Pasport and eat hummous with our Northern neighbors.
I grew up in America, alongside Jews, Christian Lebanese, and Italians, and other ethnic families in a multi-cultural area of Ohio. The Lebanese were the only ones who knew what Humuus was back then. I am now 53 years old.
No one even heard of humuus until they visited our home and ate the humuus with Lebanese bread.
Each country may have their own variation but when you consider origins I am in agreement. It’s Lebanon.
I accept that people of Lebanese extraction ate hummus. I don’t know how familiar you were with the food eaten in the Jewish houses, but assuming they were Ashkenazic Jews of European origin, I doubt that they ate hummus. Similarly, the Italians wouldn’t have.
However, Oriental Jews from Egypt, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Palestine might well have. The question is whether hummus is generic to the Levant or Lebanese only?
TO put it differently, Former Israel President Chaim Herzog would not have eaten hummus in Ireland, but his Egyptian wife might have. Navon, his predecessor who was born in Jerusalem might have as well.
Thanks for expressing an interest in the posting.
Michael
it is just like everything else with Israel. they claimed the land, the history, and now the culture. this is another attempt to convince people around the world that Hummous is native to Israel this is true if we say Hummous is native to Palestine not Israel. if people read a little Palestine, Syria and Lebanon share the same type of food. Jews came later in 1948 with no culture or land to claim Palestine as their land so anything that existed in the land of Palestine claimed as their own to create culture for themselves.what i have just said does not mean i hate Jews in anyway( I am not Anti-smite which some Israeli will quickly claim) but the truth has to be told, and us Arabs must stand up to these cheap attempts of culture and history thefts.
As the previous comment is focused, I’ve allowed it. It’s not historically accurate though. There is more than enough archeological evidence that Jews were living in the area continuously from Biblical times.
Interestingly, despite recent revisionism, both Moslem and Christian Arabs accept the historical validity of the Old Testament and both Moses and Jesus as prophets.
I don’t know whether the author is an Antisemite or not. Many but not all anti-Zionists are and anyway it is irrelevant to the discussion. Hummous is a food without clear history of where first created and without a definitive recipe. Jews have been living for thee thousand years in the region where hummous was created and where chickpeas are grown.
My father’s family is from Morocco and we’ve eatern “hummous” for generations–usually cooked chickpeas with meat, often served at celebrations and on Shabbat. This is a silly argument made by the irredentists here–hummous is Levantine, shared by Jews, Moslems and Christians alike. It doesn’t belong to any one country, and to turn this into an anti-Israel diatribe is ridiculous. I’ll forego comment on the historically inaccurate nonsense about Jews not living here before 1948 (my mother’s family has been in Tzfat and Jerusalem since the mid-1400s, far longer than most “Palestinians”) and we had a vibrant culture then and have one now. Make peace, come visit and eat hummous with us, and you’ll see.
On the other hand, I think that channeling national pride and the Arab Israel conflict onto the culinary playing field is rather better than lobbying missiles back and forth over the fence…