Who owns hummus?

Posted By David Kenner Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - 9:56 AM Share

David Silverman/Getty Images

Lebanon plans to charge Israel with violating a food copyright by marketing provisions such as hummus and falafel as Israeli, Fadi Abboud, the president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association announced Monday. Abboud contends that these foods are historically Lebanese, and that Israel's appropriation of them has cost the Levantine country profits "estimated at tens of millions of dollars annually."

Lebanon's case will likely rely on "the feta precedent," said Abboud. Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.

The origins of hummus remain shrouded in mystery, but attempts to claim the food as a "national dish" remain a reliable way to start nationalistic squabbles across the region. Bringing this case to the courts, however, is unlikely to win the Lebanese government points even with a domestic audience. Most likely, it will simply reinforce the belief that while Hezbollah readies its rockets against Israel, all the Lebanese state can muster is frivolous lawsuits.

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MRS BLACK

10:56 AM ET

October 8, 2008

Let's not forget tabbouleh,

Let's not forget tabbouleh, aka Israeli salad, but really, don't we all have bigger things to worry about?

KHALID

1:37 PM ET

October 8, 2008

Here is my opinion: There is

Here is my opinion:
There is very little that is "Israeli" about tebbouleh, hummus, couscous or any of the other Middle Eastern dishes that are marketed as being "Islaeli X, Y, or Z". Israeli cuisine is largely aped from Levantine Arab food and anyone familiar with the food knows this. These foods were eaten by everyone in the region before Israel was founded, including the Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations. There is nothing specifically Israeli about it nor is there is there any especially Lebanese about it. Lebanese, Syria, Jordanian, and Palestinian food have only slight variations between them. The aspects of Arab cuisine that the Israelis have coopted are basically North African and Palestinian. They have no claim over it. Hummus did not originate in Palestine or Lebanon, for sure, and if any one country can claim it as their own it is Syria. There really needn't be any debate about this nonsense with Israel's food. The Arab elements of their cuisine are Arab. Period. "Pita" is not pita. It is Arabic bread, khubz. This is political correctness gone wrong. Spaghetti is an Italian dish. Americans eat it quite a lot, but that does not mean it is American.

In any event, the Lebanese have bigger problems to address, such as the failure of the Hummus Revolution and getting each other to cooperate with one another.

MPALA007

9:53 PM ET

October 10, 2008

Spaghetti Etc

Then they said spaghetti came to Italy from China
by Marco Polo which looks like Lo Mein. So What!!
and Pita looks like a lot like Nan from India also.

We should all sit down together and have some
unleavened bread, garbanzos and sesame paste made
with garlic & parsley and olive oil and forget its
"name" and where it came from. When the astronauts looked
from the moon, there were no dotted lines on the Earth!
We all live on the same Island in space with finite resources.
The time for childish petty differences are over.

mpala007

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