When people fight in war, a lot of things get drawn into it: disputes over land, power, religion, and precious resources can cause people far from the fighting to engage in their own tiny battles over just about anything, including — it turns out — a creamy, protein-filled dip.
That may help explain the enduring hummus wars half a world away from the Middle East.
Hummus — a blend of mashed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic — has been a staple in Middle Eastern cuisine for centuries. While its precise origins remain unclear, it is widely regarded as an Arab dish.
It is also a beloved part of Israeli cuisine, featured in daily meals and restaurant menus around the world.
Many customers overseas might see “Israeli cuisine” as little more than a label on their supermarket hummus. But for Palestinians uprooted from their homeland, or those helping others who have been, "Israeli cuisine" is just another slap on top of a mountain of tragedies that they have endured.
“Calling hummus an Israeli cuisine — That's proof of how they're trying to erase us.”
Samir Moganamm,
the owner of Beit Rima
“It disgusts me so much,” said Aya D., founder of Gogoroot, a nonprofit group that sells homemade hummus in Los Angeles and donates the profits to needy families and organizations in Gaza. She described it as “like poking wounds.”
For Tamer, a Palestinian-American in Anaheim who preferred to be referred to by only his first name, the term “Israeli cuisine” is a stolen term. “They stole the land, and now they’re stealing the culture,” he said.
Palestinian-American chef Samir Moganamm put it another way: “I’m done being nice anymore… They’re trying to erase us.”
Whose Dip Is it Anyway?
The beginning of hummus wars seems to date back to 2006. Sabra Foods, when Sabra Foods, a U.S.-based Israeli company at the time, secured a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the largest plate of hummus, weighing more than 800 pounds.
Sabra’s then-CEO, Yehudah Pearl, explained that the event was meant to boost Sabra’s market share and promote hummus in the United States.
Two years later, the Israeli company Hummus Tzabar broke the record with an 881-pound plate of hummus.
These publicity stunts infuriated some Lebanese hummus lovers and others in the region, who, like Moganamm, believed that Israel had appropriated a traditional Arabic dish and rebranded it as Israeli. To reclaim hummus, Lebanon chefs presented a massive 4,500-pound serving of hummus in 2009.
In January 2010, an Israeli-Palestinian citizen named Jawdat Ibrahim prepared a dish of hummus weighing more than 5,000 pounds. Aimed at restoring Israel’s honor, he claimed that hummus is “for everybody,” not just for the Lebanese.
Through his groundbreaking hummus platter, Ibrahim said he was calling for an end to the dispute and encouraging peace between Israel and its neighbors. “Today we have the hummus. Hopefully, we will have the talks for peace in our region,” he said.
But more hummus was on the way. Lebanon responded months later with a massive plate of 22,994 pounds of hummus, reclaiming the world record and asserting its cultural ownership of the savory spread. The name of the Lebanese campaign was “Hands off our dishes.”
The Association of Lebanese Industrialists sued Israel for claiming hummus as its traditional food. The group asked the European Union to grant hummus protected status, thereby earning the exclusive right to use the term “hummus” on food packages. The appeal is similar to EU's protection of authentic champagne as being exclusively from France’s Champagne region.
As part of the justification of the effort, Lebanon’s Minister of Tourism Fadi Abboud noted at the time that, "The word for chickpea in Arabic is hummus."
Palestinian communities, like those in Lebanon, also joined the “hummus war” in another way. In 2010, a Palestinian-led social movement — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — targeted Sabra over its hummus sales.
The company’s name, Sabra, comes from “tzabar” in Hebrew, referring to a Jew born in Israel.
The company’s spokesperson claimed that they “had never contributed ‘hummus or anything else’ to the Israeli military.”
The Strauss Group, an Israeli multinational food and beverage corporation, was Sabra’s co-owner at the time. Their chairwoman, Ofra Strauss, openly stated that they supported the Israeli military, stating that “For us, Israeli soldiers are not army; Israeli soldiers are our kids. And when children of this country are in need, we will be there."
In the United States, university students at Princeton, DePaul, UC Riverside and Harvard have joined the boycott movement and urged their schools to find a replacement brand for Sabra.
Over the years, facing continuing boycotts, fierce competition and plant contamination controversies, Sabra's share of the U.S. hummus market fell sharply from over 60% in 2012 to 37% this year. In November 2024, PepsiCo acquired full ownership of Sabra.
Sabra hummus in Target. (Photo by Chieh-Yu, Lee)
In some ways, hummus wars are a local stand-in for the broader struggle between Israel and Palestine, as well as much of the rest of the Arab world.
But Hummus is hardly the only contested food. Searching “Israeli cuisine” on Google or browsing through the tag “Israeli cuisine” on Instagram reveals results filled with shakshuka, baba ganoush, lentil soup, and falafel, which are common dishes across the Middle Eastern regions and parts of North Africa, from the West Bank to Morocco.
Israeli restaurants began featuring traditional Arabic dishes on their menus, while grocery stores strategically labeled foods like hummus and baba ganoush as "Mediterranean cuisine" — a vague designation that effectively erased their distinct cultural origins.
Hummus branded as "Mediterranean" in Trader Joe's. (Photo by Chieh-Yu, Lee)
Anne Trad, a Palestinian-style deli owner in South Los Angeles, recalled spotting the Costco-branded hummus labeled as made in Australia and Israel. "I was surprised by that," said Trad.
Israeli Cuisine?
Carlos Gonzalez, a private chef in Los Angeles who spent years in Israel and who has focused on Middle Eastern cuisine for over five years, said some people argue that since Israel has only been a country for 76 years, there is no such thing as Israeli food.
Jews had been living in the region, but it was only on May 14, 1948, that David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of Israel. The announcement triggered the War of Independence, as five Arab nations launched military action against the newly established country, reflecting the Arab League's rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan. Despite being outnumbered and surrounded, Israel defended its territory and expanded beyond the U.N.-defined borders before gaining international recognition the following year.
Israeli chef Einat Admony wrote in her cookbook Shuk that modern Israeli cuisine is "a fusion of the local Levantine Palestinian cuisine with foods brought to Israel by Jewish immigrants."
The initial Jewish immigration wave, composed largely of Holocaust survivors from Europe and Jews fleeing Muslim nations, deliberately established a culinary identity apart from local Levantine food traditions. That remained the case from 1948 into the 1960s.
Traditional Ashkenazi (European Jewish) cuisine, heavily influenced by Central European food traditions, dominated, while subsequent immigrants were actively discouraged from maintaining their culinary traditions under the pressure of the dominant culture.
"In the first two decades of the state, the Israeli people didn't eat local food. They stuck to their old habits," Haaretz food journalist Ronit Vered explained in a 2016 interview with NPR. She pointed out that the choice is political; if the original immigrants to Israel ate Palestinian food, it would be a form “of acknowledgment of the existence of the local Palestinians."
But by the 1960s, Arab salads and dishes had gradually found their way into Israeli kitchens. The Israeli army started serving hummus, and soon the average Israeli came to see hummus as an everyday food.
Embracing local food helped Israel foster a sense of belonging and nativism. However, while settlers embraced hummus, they erased its Arab origins, as anything associated with 'Arab' carried political implications. Local ingredients, cuisine and cooking methods found growing acceptance, although they were often renamed and rebranded as "Israeli."
Nowadays, hummus has been viewed as an unofficial national cuisine due to its popularity among the Israeli population.
Hummus (right side of the plate) and baba ganoush. (Photo by Chieh-Yu, Lee)
A One-Sided Food Fight?
Israeli chefs and diners do not understand what they see as the food-driven fury of some Palestinians and their supporters. Hummus and baba ganoush are embedded in their daily diet.
Situated just outside Beverly Hills, The Nosh is an Israeli deli-style breakfast restaurant that was founded in 1975. The menu includes hummus, baba ganoush, and shakshuka.
When asked for her take on the fight over hummus, McKenzie McGoldrick, The Nosh’s general manager, commented, "Things were created to be enjoyed by everyone. It doesn't matter who created it."
Ron Magnim, the co-owner of the restaurant, argued that the recipe for The Nosh comes from his partner's Moroccan mother. "I don't care if someone wants to say it's from somewhere," he stated, “To me, it's just a dish that we do, and we do it well. That's all.”
Long before borderlines were drawn, hummus existed. The word "hummus" itself means "chickpea" in Arabic. The earliest known recipe for a hummus-like dish dates to 13th century Egypt.
“Hummus has existed in that specific part of the world — in Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the historically Palestinian region — for many, many hundreds of years,” Gonzalez explained.
The problem, Gonzalez said, comes when people identify the food as Israeli. “No one owns hummus, no one can own a food.” He concluded, “However, certain foods are from specific regions, and hummus is one of them. They're part of Arabic identity. It is part of who they are, how they grew up.”
For Tamer, hummus is more than a dish; it is a symbol rooted in his childhood memory, “When we were little kids, that's the first thing we ate [in the morning]. We ate it for breakfast, dinner as well as appetizers. We eat hummus.”
Mogannam, the Palestinian-American chef, had similar feelings. “My grandma was eating hummus before Israel was ever a country. How could hummus be Israeli?”
He has devoted half of his 10-year career to recreating the original taste of Palestinian cuisine. His restaurant, Beit Rima, offers comfort food for many Arab communities.
Recently, he added a new dish, Mesdze Sampler, to his menu. It comes with four dips and two apples and is one of the most popular appetizers in his restaurants. This traditional dish rarely appears in Arab restaurants, but it is often served on Palestinian plates at home.
For Mogannam, labels such as “Middle Eastern” or “Mediterranean” are vague. What he made at Beit Rima, he explained, is Arabic comfort food. "I would like to be proud of our Arab culture, heritage, and identity, and be able to share our beautiful culture and overwhelming hospitality with people,” he said.
Inside Beit Rima, many dishes are served in generous portions, specifically designed for sharing. Mogannam explained that in Palestine, it’s customary to serve large dishes on a huge platter so that everyone can gather around it and eat together.
He pays tribute to Arabic and Palestinian cultures for a reason. While seeking to preserve genuine Palestinian tastes, he is also taking his place on the battlefield — with food.
“Palestinian culture and life and land are under attack,” Mogannam gritted his teeth in fury, “So anything we can do to preserve our culture is very important.”
Speaking of the term “Israeli cuisine” soon ignited his anger. “That’s 100% of cultural appropriation," he said.
Cultural appropriation refers to a situation when cultural power is unequal between two groups, and the mainstream culture marginalizes the weaker culture by using and modifying the other’s cultural elements, distorting and weakening it without respect or understanding.
The appropriation — branding hummus as Israeli cuisine — is part of a larger effort by Israel to erase Palestinian culture and establish a homogenous Israeli and Jewish identity, noted Dafna Hirsch, senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at The Open University of Israel.
Aya agreed and stated, the term “Israeli cuisine” is a symbol of Israel’s occupation, colonization, cultural appropriation and the erasure of Palestinian identity.
Beyond Hummus
Could there be a solution for the hummus wars?
After all, not every hummus in every region is the same. Gonzalez suggests that when people sell hummus, they should use the word “ -style” to indicate its origin — “Israeli-style hummus” or “ Palestinian-style hummus.”
That way, he said, “You're honoring both the origin and the cultural integrity of the food."
But we all understand that the hummus wars are merely the tip of the iceberg, reflecting the deep-rooted and longstanding conflict between Israel and Arab communities, especially Palestine. The war on hummus will never come to an end unless the conflict in the Middle East diminishes a great deal.
Conflict at the Table:
How Middle Eastern Tensions Affect Businesses
Since October 7, 2023, the trigger for the latest brutal flare-up in a dispute that has gone on for generations, much has changed, including many thousands of miles away in California. In many cases, even restaurants began to feel like fortified outposts joining in the fight, even in small ways. Please click on each section to see how businesses are affected.
Civilization is inseparable from food — and so is war. Regardless of how the conflict unfolds, one thing remains constant: on either side of the walls, across seas and continents, people will continue to savor spoonfuls of hummus.
"You could have hummus in Ramallah (the de facto capital of Palestine), on the other side of the Wall in Jerusalem, or maybe in a suburb of Jerusalem; there's someone eating hummus there too,” Gonzalez said, adding, “At the end of the day, it's just chickpeas, salt, and tahini."
With each bite, they unknowingly taste the layers of war, discord, and bitterness that linger within.
