Reddit reviews Hot Dog: A Global History (Edible)

You know, there's a lot of dumb shit in this conflict, but the "Israelis stealing food" is my pet peeve. It's as ludicrous as the Mossad Sharks conspiracy, and as much of a multilayered cake of bullshit as the Four Maps Lie. I'm sorry if I'm going to repeat a few of your points (as well as the points I made in the thread you've linked to), and I hope you don't see this as leeching off your post, but I need to get this off my chest:

Arab Israelis

As you mentioned, ~20% of Israelis are Arabs. But more importantly, Israeli Jews don't have a single cuisine. So it's not 80% Jewish cuisine, and 20% Arab. It's 20% Arab Israeli, 11% Moroccan-Jewish, 10% Russian-Jewish and so on. Even if we ignore the fact that most Israeli Jews are also Middle Eastern, Arab Israelis alone are probably the largest food culture in Israel, by sheer force of numbers.

Now, some pro-Palestinians like to claim that Arab Israelis don't really count as Israelis at all. That's the kind of racist bullshit they seem to share with Israeli far-right-wingers. But it's not really reflected in what the Arab Israelis are, and how they actually feel. According to a recent Haaretz poll, while 65% of them define themselves as Israelis (46% as Arab Israelis and 19% as Palestinian Israelis), and 22% just as "Arabs", only 14% define themselves as purely Palestinian.

Jewish Israelis

I get what you're saying about the pro-Palestinians assuming all Jews are Ashkenazi, but honestly, I feel there's a huge element of ignorance in it - even more than malice. I'm not talking about the likes of Abunimah, but certainly his readership. At least that was my experience with the pro-Palestinians and Arabs I've encountered on reddit.

And not only are they ignorant about the fact most Jewish Israelis are from Arab countries, and have been eating that food for centuries, they're also kind of ignorant about the kind of food they eat. There's the assumption that Israeli cuisine is 100% Levantine Arab, and therefore, must be Palestinian. If they knew that the main dishes Israelis would call "Israeli food" include the likes of schnitzel and mashed potatoes, chicken soup with shkedei marak, rugelach, sufganiyot and hamantaschen, along with non-Levantine MENA dishes like (real) couscous, shakshuka, jachnun, amba and so on, their opinion would probably be pretty different. Not necessarily positive, but at least expressed differently.

This is not to say there's no racist element in this whole thing. More on this later.

How food culture works

Even if Arab Israelis were a small minority, and they were the only people in Israel who traditionally ate Arab food, there's absolutely nothing unusual about a minority providing the nation's national dishes. Fish and Chips were famously brought to the UK by Portuguese Jews. Both Hamburgers and Hot Dogs are German-American (13% of Americans). The Hot Dog is literally an old timey racist stereotype of Germans putting dogs in sausage (source: Hot Dog: A Global History), renamed from "Frankfurter" (another German city) due to yet more anti-German sentiments during WW1. Pelmeni, probably the most iconic Russian dish, comes from the deeply marginalized northern indigenous tribes, who brought it from China.

And speaking of China, most of the world's cuisines were heavily influenced by one of the Three Great Cuisines: China, France and Turkey. The Arab cuisines, and the Levantine Arab cuisine that the Palestinian cuisine is a variant of, is absolutely one of them. A huge percentage of the traditional Levantine Arab dishes, along with basic cooking concepts, are actually Turkish in origin, including very recent ones. It's fascinating to see people get upset about Jews "stealing" the indigenous Arab dish of shawarma, literally a Turkish word, describing a Turkish dish, invented in the very Turkish city of Bursa in the 19th century. Incidentally, that also means that a lot of dishes Israelis supposedly stole from the Arabs weren't even brought by Jews from Arab countries, but by Jews from Bulgaria, Romania, and yes, Turkey.

The interesting thing about the "stealing food" claim is how deeply unusual it is, even in the context of nationalist discourses. The Chinese are a very proud people, and they hate the Japanese quite a bit, but I don't see them throwing a hissy fit anytime Ramen is mentioned as a Japanese dish. Or for that matter, any of the other countless dishes, cooking techniques and implements that are replicated across East Asia. It might mean that China is a cultural beacon, while other nations are less so. It might even mean the Chinese can point out the Chinese origins of those dishes. But it's not a sign of anyone "stealing" Chinese culture, in the same manner they might "steal" territory China claims as its own. The very notion is hilarious. The same goes for Turks, French, Italians, you name it. They might get into fiery arguments into who invented what, but once it's clear, it's just a sign of the might of their culture... and maybe even a friendly "we like the same food". Not the crazy-ass argument we see here.

The main point

And that brings me to the subtext (and often text) of this whole argument, which I feel is deeply problematic: that Jews, and certainly Israeli Jews, are a parasitic, fake non-people without culture. As Hitler put it, they're not "culture-creators" like the Arabs, but "culture-destroyers".

Other nations, like Arabs, might be influenced by other cuisines, even if the influence is immense. Young nations like Palestine and Lebanon can participate in regional cuisines, even if a precious few dishes were actually invented there. And minorities that "know their place", including within the Arab world, can sort-of-kind-of claim those dishes as well. But when the Israeli Jews do it, it's something completely different. Like a worm in an apple, they can only steal culture in a violent, destructive act from their betters, and even more importantly, defile it. Note how many of the comments in the thread you linked to seem to obsess over those points, even when they don't flat out say them.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think it's all just random, unrelated antisemitism. I realize it's all part of the general political claim of how Jews aren't a people and therefore don't deserve a country in Palestine, and just generally being upset about Israel existing. I just think it's another expression of how this political argument leads to hateful and honestly racist (cue "Israeli Jews aren't a race, but Palestinian Arabs are") kind of thinking. One that obscures basic rational thought, keeps people ignorant of basic facts, and turns something that could've unified us into yet another reason to hate.