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gothhabiba · 5 months

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loving your falafel research saga and just wanted to ask - something I remember hearing about falafel is that while Israeli culture definitely appropriated it, the concept of serving it in pita bread with salads, tahini etc. is a specifically Israeli twist on the dish. I wonder if you found/know anything about that?

The short answer is: it's not impossible, but I don't think there's any way to tell for sure. The long answer is:

The most prominent claim I've heard of this nature is specifically that Yemeni Jews (who had immigrated to Israel under 'right of return' laws and were Israeli citizens) invented the concept of serving falafel in "pita" bread in the 1930s—perhaps after they (in addition to Jews from Morocco or Syria) had brought falafel over and introduced it to Palestinians in the first place.

"Mizrahim brought falafel to Palestine"

This latter claim, which is purely nonsense (again... no such thing as Moroccan falafel!)—and which Joel Denker (linked above) repeats with no source or evidence—was able to arise because it was often Mizrahim who introduced Israelis to Palestinian food. Mizrahi falafel sellers in the early 20th century might run licensed falafel stands, or carry tins full of hot falafel on their backs and go from door to door selling them (see Shaul Stampfer on a Yemeni man doing this, "Bagel and Falafel: Two Iconic Jewish Foods and One Modern Jewish Identity," in Jews and their Foodways, p. 183; this Arabic source mentions a 1985 Arabic novel in which a falafel seller uses such a tin; Yael Raviv writes that "Running falafel stands had been popular with Yemenite immigrants to Palestine as early as the 1920s and ’30s," "Falafel: A National Icon," Gastronomica 3.3 (2003), p. 22).

On Mizrahi preparation of Palestinian food, Dafna Hirsch writes:

As Sami Zubaida notes, Middle Eastern foodways, while far from homogeneous, are nevertheless describable in a vocabulary and set of idioms that are “often comprehensible, if not familiar, to the socially diverse parties” [...]. Thus, for the Jews who arrived in Palestine from the Middle East, Palestinian Arab foods and foodways were “comprehensible, if not familiar,” even if some of the dishes were previously unknown to most of them. [...] They found nothing extraordinary or exotic in the consumption, preparation, and selling of foods from the Palestinian Arab kitchen. Therefore, it was often Mizrahi Jews who mediated local foods to Ashkenazi consumers, as street food vendors and restaurant owners. ("Urban Food Venues as Contact Zones between Arabs and Jews during the British Mandate Period," in Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean, p. 101).

Raviv concurs and furnishes a possible mechanism for this borrowing:

Other Mizrahi Jewish vendors sold falafel, which by the late 1930s had become quite prevalent and popular on the streets of Tel Aviv. [...] Tel Aviv had eight licensed Mizrahi falafel vendors by 1941 and others who sold falafel without a license. [FN: The Tel Aviv municipality granted vending license to people who could not make their living in any other way as a form of welfare.] Many of the vendors were of Yemenite origins, although falafel was unknown in Yemen. [FN: Many of the immigrants from Yemen arrived in Palestine via Egypt, so it is possible that they learned to prepare it there and then adjusted the recipe to the Palestinian version, which was made from chickpeas and not from fava beans (ṭaʿmiya). Shmuel Yefet, an Israeli falafel maker, tells about his father, Yosef Ben Aharon Yefet, who arrived in Palestine from Aden [Yemen] in the early 1920s and then traveled to Port Said in 1939. There he became acquainted with ṭaʿmiya, learned to prepare it, and then went back to Palestine and opened a falafel shop in Tel Aviv [youtube video].]*

But why claim that Yemeni Jews invented falafel (or at least that they had introduced it from Yemen), even though its adoption from Palestinian Arabs in the early days of the second Aliya, aka the 1920s (before Mizrahim had begun to immigrate in larger numbers; see Raviv, p. 20) was within living memory at this point (i.e. the 1950s)? Raviv notes that an increasing (I mean, actually she says new, which... lol) negative attitude towards Arabs in the wake of the Nakba (I mean... she says "War of Independence") created a new sense of urgency around de-Arabizing "Israeli" culture (p. 22). Its association with Mizrahi sellers allowed falafel to "be linked to Jewish immigrants who had come from the Middle East and Africa" and thus to "shed its Arab association in favor of an overarching Israeli identification" (p. 21).

Stampfer again:

On the one hand (with regard to immigrants from Eastern Europe), [falafel] underscored the break between immediate past East European Jewish foods and the new “Oriental” world of Eretz Israel.** At the same time, this food could be seen as a link with an (idealized) past. Among the Jewish public in Eretz Israel, Yemenite falafel was regarded as the most original and tastiest version. This is a bit odd, as falafel—whether in or out of a pita—was not a traditional Yemenite food, neither among Muslims nor among Jews. To understand the ascription of falafel to Yemenite Jews, it is necessary to consider their image. Yemenite Jews were widely regarded in the mid-20th century as the most faithful transmitters of a form of Jewish life that was closest to the biblical world—and if not the biblical world, at least the world of the Second Temple, which marked the last period of autonomous Jewish life in Eretz Israel. In this sense, eating “Yemenite” could be regarded as an act of bodily identification with the Zionist claim to the land of Israel. (p. 189)

So, when it's undeniable that a food is "Arab" or "Oriental" in origin, Zionists will often attribute it to Yemen, Syria, Morocco, Turkey, &c.—and especially to Jewish communities within these regions—because it cannot be permitted that Palestinians have a specific culture that differentiates them in any way from other "Arabs." A culinary culture based in the foodstuffs cultivated from this particular area of land would mean a tie and a claim to the land, which Zionist logic cannot allow Palestinians to possess. This is why you'll hear Zionists correct people who say "Palestinians" to say "Arab" instead, or suggest that Palestinians should just scooch over into other "Arab" countries because it would make no difference to them. Raviv's conclusion that the attribution of falafel to Yemeni immigrants is an effort to detach it from its "Arab" origins isn't quite right—it is an attempt to detach it, and thus Palestinians themselves, from Palestinian roots.

"Yemeni Jews first put falafel in 'pita'"

As for this claim, it's often attributed to Gil Marks: "Jews didn’t invent falafel. They didn’t invent hummus. They didn’t invent pita. But what they did invent was the sandwich. Putting it all together.” (Hilariously, the author of the interview follows this up with "With each story, I wanted to ask, but how do you know that?")

Another author (signed "Philologos") speculates (after, by the way, falsely claiming that "falafel" is the plural of the Arabic "filfil" "pepper," and that falafel is always brown, not green, inside?!):

Yet while falafel balls are undoubtedly Arab in origin, too, it may well be that the idea of serving them as a street-corner food in pita bread, to which all kinds of extras can be added, ranging from sour pickles to whole salads, initially was a product of Jewish entrepreneurship.

Shaul Stampfer cites both of these articles as further reading on the "novelty of the combination of pita, falafel balls, and salad" (FN 76, p. 198)—but neither of them cites any evidence! They're both just some guy saying something!

Marks had, however, elaborated a little bit in his 2010 Encyclopedia of Jewish Food:

Falafel was enjoyed in salads as part of a mezze (appetizer assortment) or as a snack by itself. An early Middle Eastern fast food, falafel was commonly sold wrapped in paper, but not served in the familiar pita sandwich until Yemenites in Israel introduced the concept. [...] Yemenite immigrants in Israel, who had made a chickpea version in Yemen, took up falafel making as a business and transformed this ancient treat into the Israeli iconic national food. Most importantly, Israelis wanted a portable fast food and began eating the falafel tucked into a pita topped with the ubiquitous Israeli salad (cucumber-and-tomato salad).

He references one of the pieces that Lillian Cornfeld (columnist for the English-language, Jerusalem-based newspaper Palestine Post) wrote about "filafel":

An article from October 19, 1939 concluded with a description of the common preparation style of the most popular street food, 'There is first half a pita (Arab loaf), slit open and filled with five filafels, a few fried chips and sometimes even a little salad,' the first written record of serving falafel in pita. [Marks doesn't tell you the title or page—it's "Seaside Temptations: Juveniles' Fare at Tel Aviv," p. 4.]

You will first of all notice that Marks gives us the "falafel from Yemen" story. I also notice that he calls Salat al-bundura "Israeli salad" (in its entry he does not claim that European Jewish immigrants invented it, but neither does he attribute it to Palestinian influence: the dish was originally "Turkish coban salatsi"). His encyclopedia also elsewhere contains Zionist claims such as "wild za'atar was declared a protected plant in Israel" "[d]ue to overexploitation" because of how much of the plant "Arab families consume[d]," and that Israeli cultivation of the crop yielded "superior" plants (entry for "Za'atar")—a narrative of "Arab" mismanagement, and Israeli improvement, of land used to justify settler-colonialism. He writes that Palestinians who accuse "the Jews" of theft in claiming falafel are "creat[ing] a controversy" and that "food and culture cannot be stolen," with no reflection on the context of settler-colonialism and literal, physical theft that lies behind said "controversy." This isn't relevant except that it makes me sceptical of Marks's motivations in general.

More pertinent is the fact that this quote doesn't actually suggest that this falafel vendor was Yemeni (or otherwise) Jewish, nor does it suggest that he was the first one to prepare falafel in pitas with "fried chips," "sometimes even a little salad," and "Tehina, a local mayonnaise made with sesame oil" (Cornfeld, p. 4). I think it likely that this food had been sold for a while before it was described in published writing. The idea that this preparation is "Israeli" in origin must be false, since this was before the state of "Israel" existed—that it was first created by Yemeni Jewish falafel vendors is possible, but again, I've never seen any direct evidence for it, or anyone giving a clear reason for why they believe it to be the case, and the political reasons that people have for believing this narrative make me wary of it. There were Palestinian Arab falafel vendors at this time as well.

"Chickpea falafel is a Jewish invention"

There is also a claim that falafel originated in Egypt, where it was made with fava beans; spread to the Levant, including Palestine, where it was made with a combination of fava beans and chickpeas; but that Jewish immigration to Israel caused the origin of the chickpea-only falafal currently eaten in Palestine, because a lot of Jewish people have G6PD deficiencies or favism (inherited enzymatic deficiencies making fava beans anywhere from unpleasant to dangerous to eat)—or that Jewish populations in Yemen had already been making chickpea-only falafel, and this was the falafel which they brought with them to Palestine.

As far as I can tell, this claim comes from Joan Nathan's 2001 The Foods of Israel:

Zadok explained that at the time of the establishment of the state, falafel—the name of which probably comes from the word pilpel (pepper)—was made in two ways: either as it is in Egypt today, from crushed, soaked fava beans or fava beans combined with chickpeas, spices, and bulgur; or, as Yemenite Jews and the Arabs of Jerusalem did, from chickpeas alone. But favism, an inherited enzymatic deficiency occurring among some Jews—mainly those of Kurdish and Iraqi ancestry, many of whom came to Israel during the mid 1900s—proved potentially lethal, so all falafel makers in Israel ultimately stopped using fava beans, and chickpea falafel became an Israeli dish.

Gil Marks's 2010 Encyclopedia of Jewish Food echoes (but does not cite):

Middle Eastern Jews have been eating falafel for centuries, the pareve fritter being ideal in a kosher diet. However, many Jews inherited G6PD deficiency or its more severe form, favism; these hereditary enzymatic deficiencies are triggered by items like fava beans and can prove fatal. Accordingly, Middle Eastern Jews overwhelmingly favored chickpeas solo in their falafel. (Entry for "Falafel")

The "centuries" thing is consistent with the fact that Marks believes falafel to be of Medieval origin, a claim which most scholars I've read on the subject don't believe (no documentary evidence, + oil was expensive so it seems unlikely that people were deep frying anything). And, again, this claim is speculation with no documentary evidence to support it.

As for the specific modern toppings including the Yemeni hot sauce سَحاوِق / סְחוּג (saHawiq / "zhug"), Baghdadi mango pickle عنبة / עמבה ('anba), and Moroccan هريسة / חריסה ("harissa"), it seems likely that these were introduced by Mizrahim given their place of origin.

*You might be interested to know that, despite their Jewishness mediating this borrowing, Mizrahim were during the Mandate years largely ethnically segregated from Eastern European Zionists, who were pushing to create a "new" European-Israeli Judaism separate from what they viewed as the indolence and ignorance of "Oriental" Jewishness (Hirsch p. 101).

This was evidenced in part by Europeans' attitudes towards the "Oriental" diet. Ari Ariel, summarizing Yael Raviv's Falafel Nation, writes:

Although all immigrants were thought to require culinary education as an aspect of their absorption into the new national culture, Middle Eastern Jews, who began to immigrate in increasing numbers after 1948, provoked greater anxiety on the part of the state than did their Ashkenazi co-religionists. Israeli politicians and ideologues spoke of the dangers of Levantization and stereotyped Jews from the Middle East and North Africa as primitive, lazy, and ignorant. In keeping with this Orientalism, the state pressured Middle Easterners to change their foodways and organized cooking demonstrations in transit camps and new housing developments. (Book review, Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016), p. 169.)

See also Esther Meir-Glitzenstein, "Longing for the Aromas of Baghdad: Food, Emigration, and Transformation in the Lives of Iraqi Jews in Israel in the 1950s," in Jews and their Foodways:

[...] [T]he Israeli establishment was set on “educating” the new immigrants not only in matters of health and hygiene, [77] but also in the realm of nutrition. A concerted propaganda effort was launched by well-baby clinics, kindergartens, schools, health clinics, and various organizations such as the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) and the Organization of Working Mothers in order to promote the consumption of milk and dairy products, in particular. [78] (These had a marginal place in Iraqi cuisine, consumed mainly by children.) Arab and North African cuisines were criticized for being not sufficiently nutritious, whereas the Israeli diet was touted as ideal, as it was western and modern. […] [T]he assault on traditional Middle Eastern cuisines reflected cultural arrogance yet another attempt to transform immigrants into “new Jews” in accordance with the Zionist ethos. Thus, European table manners were presented as the norm. Eating with the hands was equated with primitive behavior, and use of a fork and knife became the hallmark of modernity and progress. (pp. 100-101)

[77. On health matters, see Davidovich and Shvarts, “Health and Hegemony,” 150–179; Sahlav Stoller-Liss, “ ‘Mothers Birth the Nation’: The Social Construction of Zionist Motherhood in Wartime in Israeli Parents’ Manuals,” Nashim 6 (Fall 2003), 104–118.]

[78. On propaganda for drinking milk and eating dairy products, see Mor Dvorkin, “Mif’alei hahazanah haḥinukhit bishnot ha’aliyah hagedolah: mekorot umeafyenim” (seminar paper, Ben-Gurion University, 2010).]

**On the desire to shed "old, European" "Jewish" identity and take on a "new, Oriental" "Hebrew" one, and the contradictory impulses to use Palestinian Arabs as models in this endeavour and to claim that they needed to be "corrected," see:

Itamar Even-Zohar, "The Emergence of a Native Hebrew Culture in Palestine, 1882—1948"

Dafna Hirsch, "We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves": Zionist Occidentalism and the Discourse of Hygiene in Mandate Palestine"

Ofra Tene, "'The New Immigrant Must Not Only Learn, He Must Also Forget': The Making of Eretz Israeli Ashkenazi Cuisine."

#sorry for this but you should've known better than to ask me about falafel at this stage in my life #falafel research saga

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librarycards · 12 days

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I grew up in morocco (saw your tags) how did you like it?

I love Rabat, one of my favorite cities. Love the people broadly, love the cats, and the food is life-altering. It is also visually stunning. I wish there were more awareness of vegan diets, though this is also my own failure to know french or Darija! The vegan food I did get slapped SEVERELY. Also some very cool judaica/old synagogues there that I enjoyed checking out, though I hadn't even began formally converting yet at the time! (early 2018 - officially began near the end of 2018).

I think I would have had more negative experiences w/r/t street harassment if I had a larger and curvier body. As it was, while not always deliberately "passing" as a boy, this was definitely something I did semi-intentionally with what I wore. This meant I couldn't go to the baths, but it also saved me a lot of trouble just walking around.

Alas, Marrakesh and Casablanca are tourist-poisoned. [I did love the Hassan II mosque though]. But if anyone has / you have tips on good places to go, please send them my way, because I would love to go back. Rabat, I think, hit the sweet spot of being very open to outsiders without losing its sense of self.

#ask #anonymous

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runawaycarouselhorse · 8 months

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"A huge 6.8 magnitude earthquake has struck Morocco before midnight on Friday the 8th of September, killing more than 2000 people. Sadly, the poverty-stricken areas have been impacted the most, so many who were already destitute and are now living on the streets waiting for aid.

One Ummah aim to immediately respond in the form of tents, housing, food packs, clean drinking water, hot meals, hygiene kits and blankets.

We need your help to save as many lives as possible in this difficult situation. Our ambassadors Yusuf Chambers and Sh McCarthy are preparing to travel there now.

The Prophet Muhammad s.a.w said: ‘Whosoever removes a worldly grief from a believer, Allah will remove from him one of the griefs of the Day of Judgment.’"

#Morocco #Marrakech #earthquakes #charity #signal boost

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bu1410 · 2 months

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Palermo - Italy

Hotel du Lac - Tunis

Hammamet - Tunisia

Costantine - Algeria

Fez - Morocco

Casablanca - Downtown

Typical Moroccan ''Grand Taxi

Benalmadena - Spain

Good evening TUMBLR - March 4th - 2024

From today , in order not to boring my 3 or 4 readers, I decided to alternate the writing of my work's experience, with holidays/vacation's adventures.

I hope that will make my writing less boring and more various.

Neverthekess, the overall title remains the same':

''Mr. Plant has owed me a shoe since July 5, 1971."

Ch. I - August 1975 - Italy - Tunisia – Algeria – Morocco – Spain – France – Italy.

So me and my ''partner in crime'' Gianluigi, we decided to make a Mediterramean circumnavigation: the Citroen DS19 purchased from by Mr. Proserpio, Gianluigi's uncle, for the modest sum of 300,000 lire (150 euros) we hope it will take us on a journey through six countries. The travel from Milan to Palermo was smoothly. It should be noted that the works on the Salerno – Reggio Calabria highway section (especially in the Lagonegro area) were already underway, and will continue for many years to come. Once in Palermo, we slept the night in a moribund AGIP Motel, an attempt by ENI (italian Hydrocarbur Giant) to provide Italy with a network of decent and not excessively expensive motels, obviously doomed to failure.

TUNISIA We board the ship to Tunis early in the morning and the got first surprise: on the ferry there is Mr. Mastelloni, a very popular Italian comedian at that time, of which no one ever really understood what he was, artistically speaking I mean. However, it was easy to understand: he was accompanied by a young ''blondy boy'' with blue eyes, similar to the main carachter of ''Death in Venice'' movie. As well as by two whiskey-coloured Afghan dogs, which were ''trendy'' at that time. We spent the night standing up, since we had a bridge ticket, so we slept little and badly on the sofas in the on-board bar. After docking in Tunis and disembarking, we understood that we were behind everyone at the customs check. A business card from the son of the Tunisian Minister of Industry, in Gianluigi's possession, comes to our aid (we have to deliver to this guy two sample chairs produced by G. Luigi's workshop for possible approval and export). As soon as the local policeman saw the business card, he immediately made us leave the queue, and in an instant, followed by the protests of the other passengers in the queue under the midday sun, we were outside the fence of Tunis port. We stay overnight at the Hotel du Lac, a building with the strange shape of an inverted pyramid: from the window of our room, on the 22nd floor, it was easy to see the sidewalk about 60 meters below: ''Let's hope that the building doesn't tip over this very night'' I told my friend. In the evening we take a tour of the old Medina, with dinner in a typical restaurant: large crevettes dish with a unique flavor at a price at which in Italy you would eat a sandwich on the street! For the rest, at the time, there was no nightlife, the clubs were all closed, in a sort of early lockdown. The following day, after having delivered the chairs to the Minister's son (followed by his exaggerated thanks) we left for Hammamet, where we would treat ourselves to a couple of days of relaxation before embarking on the journey to Algeria. And here I must make a premise: Tunisia in 1975 was a nation that was emerging from the long post-colonial period, and was governed by a Socialist regime. The ''Mediterranee hotel'', where we stayed, was a typical expression of this management: the various activities of the hotel - kitchen, rooms, swimming pool, beach -were managed by various cooperatives.

The result was simply disheartening. On the access staircase to the restaurant, in a glass showcase, the day's food was displayed: lunch with tomato-colored soup where 2 crevettes were floating - green salad with tomatoes, carrots, peppers and hard-boiled eggs. Two flies flew happily inside the box… and then there was nothing else…. In the hotel lobby we come in touch with a group of Italians from Abeille Insurance on a reward trip. The wife of one of them, a tall, large guy weighing at least 120 kg, takes us by the arms and, speaking in a low voice, she asked: - ''I saw that you have a car, right? - ''Yes, I answer cautiously… - - Well, the Lady continues – I ask you a favor, would you take my husband to eat in the city this evening? We are willing to pay for dinner for you too, there is no problem, please, we have been here for three days, my husband doesn't eat anything that is offered to us, and this morning when he got out of bed he almost fainted to the floor ……'' Well, the rumors spread at fast speed: attracted by the possibility of ''eating'' in the evening, 8 Italians found us and board our the Citroen before we can say anuthing! We choose the ''Barberousse restaurant''and we were threated with excellent grilled meat and local rosé wine – our guests had a sort of big binge, and all of them filled several take away containers. After the dinner, while wandering around the Medina of Hammamet, we understand the reason for Mr. Mastelloni's trip to Tunisia: some advert on the walls inform us that the 'Deuxieme Festival des Homosexuelles'' (the 2nd Homosexual Festival) was underway in a nightclub of the city!!! We were really astonished that in a Muslim country such kind of festival could take place. After a two-day stay where we also discover that around the hotel swimming pool yet another cooperative cooks excellent meat and fish brochette, we set off for Algeria.

ALGERIA The Tunisian state roads have good asphalt, and the journey was smooth till the border. The formalities at the Tunisian border post were completed in a few minutes. Then a couple of kilometers of ''No Man's Land'' took us to the Algeria border post.

The police shack was in very bad shape. The immigration policeman at first doesn't believe it was me on passport picture. (I had a mustache in the passport photo). Than he went back into the guard post box with both of our passports. After about twenty minutes, the Algerian policeman opened the shack's window and, shouting incomprehensible words in Arabic, literally throwed our passports at us! I stop Gianluigi from replying, I collect the passports and said ''merci Monsieur, au-revoir'' we finally left: certainly not a good welcome to Algeria!

Algeria is a land that is iconographically symbolized by deserts and dunes, but the region we pass through instead appears to us as a sort of ''African Switzerland''. Kabylia is mountainous and green and in the distance you can see numerous flocks of sheep and cows. The farms are bordered by well-maintained fences. We travelled quickly, and in the evening we arrived in Constantine. We pass impressed on the famous Sidi M'Cid: a 164 m long suspended bridge that crosses the Rhumel river in Constantine. It was opened to traffic in April 1912 and until 1929 it was the highest bridge in the world, standing at considerable height of 175 m. The next day we were traveling towards the North-West - at midday we have a quick lunch in white Algiers: its kasbah is still impressive but we had no intention of stopping there. And then away again, the roads were worse than the Tunisian ones; the asphalt is often full of potholes or completely missing. This is despite the country being a large oil producer, so asphalt should be available at very low cost. It was evening when we arrived in Sidi Bel Abbes and for the overnight stay we choose the pompous ''Intercontinental'' an old hotel built during the French occupation of the country. The rooms were dirty, sheets not washed since when? Bathrooms with taps from which a trickle of water flows slowly. The dinner, however, is a farce: - ''What are you offering for dinner''? - ''Des pates avec sardines'' (Spaghetti with sardines) - ''Et apres''? (And after''? - ''Des sardines'' (Sardines) - ''Chaude''………….(hot…) The next morning we literally escaped from the Intercontinental and pass through Tlemcen. From the main road it was possible to have a glimpse of the vineyards of the famous ''Coteux de Mascara'' rosé wine planted by the French. During the years of the civil war from 1991-1995, all the vineyards were removed. At the Western Algerian border we were lucky, and we crossed without problems. Further on, after the usual 2 kilometers of no man's land, at the Moroccan border post of Zouij Beghal a singular encounter: four Italians from Venice traveling in an Opel Rekord: - ''Where do you come from?'' we asked them

- From the Cape North'' - ''Cape North''? - Yes, we have few days holidays, and we promised ourselves to run from Padua to Cape North – than Morocco – Algeria – Tunisia – Italy. - ''Ahh….ok …''vaste programme''……. good continuation guys ….''

MOROCCO In the meantime, the Moroccan policeman kindly asked us to give a lift till the first village to an elderly lady that was carrieng a box containing four chickens. It is very common practice in Morocco, being asked to give a lift of stranded people. Once left the lady at the Attamiaas souk, our journey continued towards Oujda, the first important Moroccan city on the road to South-West. The route was very tormented, with ups and downs among the stony hills and sudden, very steep descents towards the ouadis and their unsafe bridges. We were crossing one of these bridges, where the road narrows sharply, when, about halfway through it, suddenly a blue Mercedes Grand Taxi enters the bridge from the opposite side!!! The Mercedes star on the hood of the car seems to get bigger and bigger as the taxi gets closer to us! In this situation - Gianluigi was driving - the only thing to do would be to stop and lean the car as much as possible against the balustrade of the bridge. Which - for inscrutable reasons - my friend didn't do! In fact I had the feeling that he speeds up in an (useless) attempt to reach the opposite end of the bridge before the Mercedes meet us! By then we understood that two cars cannot pass on the bridge at the same time, and we huddle closer and closer to the right parapet of the bridge, fearing the impact of the bodies at any moment! WHICH HAPPENED ! But… after a skid I believe due to the blow received on the side of the Citroen by the Mercedes, my friend managed to put the car back in the right direction!! We arrived on the other side of the Ouadi and we find ourselves at the first lay-by and we stop – for a moment we didn't had the strength to go down and check the damage to the car. In the meantime we realize that the blue taxi, far from stopping, has disappeared up the opposite slope. At this point Gianluigi took out a providential bottle of whiskey from the cardboard box, purchased on the ship between Palermo and Tunis! A couple of sips and we recover from the scare! It was needed!! Finally we got out of the car and realize that the end part of the left side of car's bodywork was missing! The impact with the Mercedes detached it. As we run back, and we see it lying in the middle of the bridge: it was a little battered, but once we returned to our car, we manage to put it back in his place: everything was resolved with a great scare and minor damage to the car, but it

could have gone much worse: the clash could have thrown us further down, onto the dry riverbed of the Ouadi and than perhaps I wouldn't be here to tell you about it…… After a couple of hours (and after a few further sips of whiskey because every now and then the memory of the narrow escape came back to us) we arrived in Fez.

Fez was founded under the rule of the Idrisids during the 8th-9th centuries AD. It initially consisted of two autonomous and competing settlements. Successive waves of mainly Arab immigrants from Ifriqiya (Tunisia) and al-Andalus (Spain/Portugal) in the early 9th century gave the nascent city its Arab character. After the fall of the Idrisid dynasty, other empires came and went until the 11th century, when the Almoravid sultan Yusuf ibn Tashfin united the two settlements in what is today the neighborhood of Fes el-Bali. Under Almoravid rule, the city gained a reputation for religious culture and mercantile activity. Fez reached its peak in the Marinid era (13th-15th centuries), regaining its status as a political capital. Numerous new madrasas and mosques were built, many of which survive today, while other structures were restored. These buildings are counted among the distinctive features of the Moorish and Moroccan. We stayed at the Moorish-style hotel les Merinides, where in the evening we had a delicious dinner of local dishes. The night was spectacular, the hotel stood on a hill and I cannot forget the view of the city lights, and of the sky illuminated by the full moon and a myriad of stars. The next day, unfortunately (in the sense that with hindsight we should/could have taken more advantage of the hospitality of Fez…) we left again for Casablanca, our final Moroccan destination. Yes, because August 15th was approaching, the date on which we had an appointment with the Mr. Proserpio in Benalmadena, on the Costa del Sol, Spain. Now my three readers need to consider an important factor: we are in 1975, so no cell phones, no computers etc and international calls between Morocco and Europe were very problematic. We arrived in Dar El Baida (Casablanca) and the problem arises of finding the Toubkal hotel (a structure we found in Morocco's tourist brochures). As soon as we arrive in the city, we notice a fruit and vegetable shop: I stopped, get out of the car and show off my French knowledge (I studied it in middle school, and my teacher would be proud of me…) I ask the greengrocer: - Excuse me Monsieur, the direction to go to the Toubkal hotel? - And he ''The Toubkal Hotel''? T'as dit l'Hotel Toubkal??? Ahh yes……Wait…. one minute……'' I saw returning from the shop with two very fat Maroccan women, together by bags and bags of fruit and vegetables. Whereupon the rear doors of the Citroen are opened, and everything - bundled women, vegetables, fruit is introduced into the car!! Then the greengrocer approaches the window and says to me:

''Elles save ou' est l'hotel Toubkal, elles vont vous donner la management''! Au revoir, M'salamah! '('They know where the Toubkal hotel is, they will give you the management''! Goodbye)

So we set off again, and at every crossroads I was asking: ou'? And the women: ''a droite - a gauche-tout droite'' (Where to go''? and the women ''To the right - to the left - go straight...''). We end up leaving the city, and it occurs to me that the Toubkal hotel is near the Place des Nations Unies, therefore in the city centre……. You should know that the Moroccans have established a scale of values of ''shrewdness'' of nationalities where obviously they are in first place - les Marocain sont de raquins (Moroccans are like sharks) and all the others are more or less imbeciles. According to this scale, the Japanese are considered the most badmouthed, followed by the Germans and the English - Italians and French are nationalities that should not be trusted too much… Well, when we now understood that we have been victims of a typical ''Moroccan'' scam, the women say ''ici ici'' (here...here) and tell us to stop - we were in a suburban street, and so we asked the women: So where is hotel Toubkal '' ? They get out of the car, look at each other perplexed and then at

'in unison, throwing their hands in the air in the typical Arab expression, they tell us: ''ça moi je ne sait pas…'' (This I dont know) and disappear with all their belongs! We than continued following the signs for Center Ville until we reached the aforementioned square and then finally, in a side street, the Toubkal hotel. We spent a couple of pleasant days in Casablanca, visiting mosques and the waterfront, eating exquisite Atlantic fish dishes and drinking excellent Moroccan wines (Rosé Boulaone – Red Guerrouane). We spent the evening at the (reconstructed) coffee shop from the famous movie ''Casablanca'' at the Hyatt hotel: waiters in period uniforms, delicious dishes, mint tea served in an exemplary manner.

And then we started the journey to Spain: Tangier (Tanja as the Moroccans call it) was the first stop over on the way back to North. While waiting for the ferry that will take us to Algeciras, across the Strait of Gibraltar, we stay in an old hotel, Les Almohades, directly on the seafront. In the evening we go out for a walk on the promenade, before dinner, and we were approached by a Moroccan guy who was dragging himself on homemade crutches. Like all Tangerois he was fluent in at least three foreign languages, and he offered us ''hierba, buena cossa……'' (hashish) and then kif, the ''smoke'' of Moroccan production. Gianluigi senses the deal (if he brings it to Spain he will be able to resell it at a good profit) and buys a couple of pieces.

''Good - says my friend - let's take him to the hotel and then go out for dinner'' But at this point the limping Moroccan changed register and becomes annoying - suddenly some friends of the guy materialize who - following our steps - sing and shout like:

''hierbaaaa…… hieerbaaaa los hombres tenern hierbaaaa…policia…policiaaaaa'' (Hashish......hashish.....this guys have hashish...). My friend immediately come up with a plan: ''Let's get to the first street, turn the corner and then start running uphill towards our hotel – we'll get rid of the ''stuff'' before entering the lobby. No sooner said than done, once we reach the corner we started running! The chasers understood the game, and started running too, always shouting! With a great surprise, looking back, we discovered that the limper has thrown his crutches to the ground and he was running like a new Usain Bolt!! We manage to maintain a certain advantage, and arrived near the hotel and Gianluigi throwed the package of stuff into a rubbish bin, as we enter the hotel. We went up to the room, and with the lights off we were looking down to the street: the pursuers have arrived, and after a meeting with their neighbors, they head to the rubbish bins, where they recovered the stuff! And then, not satisfied, they direct sneers at us towards the window where they suppose we are observing the scene of their triumph! It was like that Gianluigi's career as a ''smoke trafficker'' ended, before it even began.

Early in the morning we boarded one of the first ferries to Algericiras. After a quiet Strait of Gibartar crossing, and having traveled the 120 km that separate Algeciras from Benalmadena, we arrived at the residence where – supposingly – Mr. Proserpio & Family were waiting for us. We had managed to reserve an apartment for the entire month of August - the Proserpio family would stay there for 15 days, with Gianluigi and me for the rest of the month.

Citron DS19 Pallas

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agharass · 1 year

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#morocco #maroc #street photography #photographie de rue #photography #photographie #marrakech #life #rabat #photogrpahie #orange #street food

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mariacallous · 5 months

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Some years ago, while celebrating Hanukkah at the home of Moroccan Jewish friends, I got my first taste of sfenj. I knew (and loved) the Israeli jelly donuts called sufganiyot, but sfenj, while also donuts, were something different. The yeasted dough was familiarly puffy, but instead of being shaped into a plump round, it was formed into rings. And instead of sufganiyot’s jam filling and snowy cap of powdered sugar, my friends served sfenj two ways: dipped into granulated sugar or generously drizzled with an orange-blossom-scented syrup. Naturally, I was smitten with this new-to-me expression of Hanukkah frying.

A few years after tasting sfenj, I learned about sfingi — another doughy fritter, which hails from Southern Italy and can be found in many Italian American bakeries. The term “sfingi” refers to a couple of different pastries, including simple, free-form donut holes rolled in sugar, and a more elaborate fried round that gets topped or filled with sweetened ricotta (think: cannoli filling) and sweet Amarena cherries. In Naples, the fritters are sometimes called zeppole, but in Sicily and other parts of Southern Italy, they usually go by sfingi or, to further confuse matters, sfinci.

Some Italian families make sfingi to celebrate Christmas, but they really shine on March 19th, or Saint Joseph’s Day, which honors the Virgin Mary’s husband. On that day, many Italians — particularly Sicilians who consider St. Joseph to be their patron saint — pull out all the stops to throw a feast that often ends with sfingi and other decadent sweets.

Sfenj. Sfingi. Two donuts with remarkably similar names. There had to be a connection, right? As it turns out, the North African Hanukkah treat and Southern Italy’s feast-day fritter likely do share a common ancestor. The name for both pastries comes from the Arabic word “isfenj,” which translates to“sponge,” and refers to the way dough soaks up oil while it fries, and also to its bouncy texture. (Interestingly, sufganiyot also means sponge in Hebrew, suggesting a linguistic connection between all three donuts.)

This connection also hints to the influence that Arabic cuisine had across both North Africa and Southern Italy. According to some historical accounts, sfenj originated in Moorish Spain in the Middle Ages. (The era and region similarly gave rise to the traditional Sephardic Hanukkah dish, bimuelos — small, sweet fritters that are often round in shape.) From there, the dish spread to places where Moorish traders traveled, including the Maghreb – North African countries that border the Mediterranean Sea.

Today, sfenj are popular across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. In Morocco, they were traditionally prepared by sufnajeen — bakers dedicated to the craft of making sfenj. They were (and are) considered an everyday breakfast pastry or street food snack, and are served alongside coffee or mint tea.

Jewish Moroccans, meanwhile, adopted the fritter for Hanukkah, when Jews traditionally eat foods fried in oil. They introduced sfenj to Israel when they immigrated there in the mid-20th century. In Israel, however, sfenj never caught on in quite the same way as sufganiyot. Moroccan Jewish families still make them, and they’re available in food markets nationwide, but you are not likely to see piles of sfenj in bakery windows across Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they way you will sufganiyot.

Sfingi, meanwhile, hail from Palermo, Sicily’s capital. The recipe for the ricotta-cream-filled version was invented by nuns, who adapted the dessert from Arabic cuisine and dedicated it to St. Joseph. In the weeks leading up to St. Joseph’s Day, you will find sfingi di San Giuseppe – in all of its fried, cream-filled glory — in bakeries across Southern Italy, and in communities across the world that are home to Southern Italian communities.

I like to joke that the reason Hanukkah lasts for eight nights is so home cooks can dedicate each night to a different fried treat. From potato latkes and sufganiyot to bimuelos and sfenj, there is no shortage of Hanukkah dishes to celebrate. But this year, if my patience for frying (and my appetite for fried foods!) hold, I might just add sfingi to my Hanukkah menu.

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paulpingminho · 8 months

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#food truck #cafe truck #Morocco #Casablanca #street food

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 17, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 18, 2023

In an NPR piece yesterday, Bill Chappell noted that “the war between Israel and Hamas is being fought, in part, through disinformation and competing claims.”

Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s leadership team currently in Qatar, told Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times that Hamas’s goal in their attack of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists crossed from Gaza into Israel and tortured and killed about 1,200 people, taking another 240 hostage, was to make sure the region did not settle into a status quo that excluded the Palestinians.

In 2020 the Palestinians were excluded from discussions about the Abraham Accords negotiated by then-president Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner that normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (and later Morocco). More recently, Saudi Arabia and Israel were in talks with the United States about normalizing relations.

Al-Hayya told the reporters that in order to “change the entire equation and not just have a clash,” Hamas leaders intended to commit “a great act” that Israel would respond to with fury. “[W]ithout a doubt, it was known that the reaction to this great act would be big,” al-Hayya said, but “[w]e had to tell people that the Palestinian cause would not die.”

“Hamas’s goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such,” al-Hayya said. “This battle was not because we wanted fuel or laborers,” he added. “It did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation.”

Hamas media adviser Taher El-Nounou told the reporters: “I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us.”

Hamas could be pretty certain that Israel would retaliate with a heavy hand. The governing coalition that took power at the end of 2022 is a far-right coalition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to hold that coalition together to stay in power, not least because he faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

Once it took power, Netanyahu’s government announced that expanding Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank was a priority, vowing to annex the occupied territory. It also endorsed discrimination against LGBTQ people and called for generous payments to ultra-Orthodox men so they could engage in religious study rather than work. It also tried to push through changes to the judicial system to give far more power to the government.

From January 7 until October 7, 2023, protesters turned out in the streets in huge numbers. With the attack, Israelis have come together until the crisis is resolved.

Netanyahu’s ability to stay in power depended in large part on his promises that he would keep Israelis safe. The events of October 7 on his watch—the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust—shattered that guarantee. Polls show that Israelis blame his government, and three quarters of them think he should resign. Sixty-four percent think the country should hold an election immediately after the war.

Immediately after the attack, on October 7, Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance” against Hamas, and Israeli airstrikes began to pound Gaza. On October 8, Israel formally declared war. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the country’s retaliation would “change the reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years,” and on October 9 he announced “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Israel and the U.S. have strong historic and economic ties: as Nicole Narea points out in Vox in a review of their history together, the U.S. has also traditionally seen Israel as an important strategic ally as it stabilizes the Middle East, helping to maintain the supply of Middle Eastern oil that the global economy needs. That strategic importance has only grown as the U.S. seeks to normalize ties around the region to form a united front against Iran.

For Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and other envoys, then, it appeared the first priority after the October 7 attack was to keep the conflict from spreading. Biden made it very clear that the U.S. would stand behind Israel should Iran, which backs Hamas, be considering moving in. He warned: “[T]o any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t.”

The movement of two U.S. carrier groups to the region appears so far to be helping to achieve that goal. While Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and Yemen’s Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Israel since October 7, Iran’s leaders have said they will not join Hamas’s fight and are hoping only to use the conflict as leverage against the U.S.

Militias have fired at least 55 rocket and drone strikes at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since October 7 without killing any U.S. soldiers. In retaliation, the U.S. has launched three airstrikes against militia installations in Syria, killing up to seven men (the military assesses there were not women or children in the vicinity) in the third strike on Sunday. The U.S. keeps roughly 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 troops in Iraq to work with local forces to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State.

At the same time that Biden emphasized Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’s attack and demanded the return of the hostages, he also called for humanitarian aid to Gaza through Egypt and warned Netanyahu to stay within the laws of war.

Rounds of diplomacy by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who flew to Israel and Jordan initially on October 11 and has gone back repeatedly, as well as by Biden, who has both visited the region—his second trip to a war zone—and constantly worked the phones, and other envoys, started humanitarian convoys moving into Gaza with a single 20-truck convoy on October 21. By early November, over 100 trucks a day were entering Gaza, the number the United Nations says is the minimum needed. Yesterday the Israeli war cabinet agreed to allow two tankers of fuel a day into Gaza after the U.N. said it couldn’t deliver aid because it had run out of fuel.

The U.S. has insisted from the start that Israel’s military decisions must not go beyond the laws of war. Israeli officials say they are staying within the law, yet an estimated 11,000 civilians and Hamas fighters (the numbers are not separated out) have died. Gaza has been crushed into rubble by airstrikes, and more than a million people are homeless. That carnage has sparked protests around the world along with calls for a cease-fire, which Israel rejects.

It has also sparked extreme Islamophobia and antisemitism exacerbated by social media. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Islamophobia inspired a Chicago man to stab a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy to death; more recently, antisemitism has jumped more than 900% on X (formerly Twitter). On Wednesday, Elon Musk agreed with a virulently antisemitic post on X. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded: “We condemn this abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans.” Advertisers, including IBM and Apple, announced they would no longer advertise on Musk’s platform.

While calling for humanitarian pauses in the fighting, the Biden administration has continued to focus on getting the hostages out and has rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying such a break would only allow Hamas to regroup. In The Atlantic on November 14, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who negotiated a 2012 cease-fire between Hamas and Israel only to see Hamas violate that agreement two years later, explained that cease-fires have only kicked the can down the road. “Israel’s policy since 2009 of containing rather than destroying Hamas has failed,” she said.

Clinton called for the destruction of Hamas on the one hand and “a new strategy and new leadership” for Israel on the other. “Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead,” she wrote.

Central to those choices is the long-neglected two-state solution that would establish a Palestinian state. Biden and Blinken and a number of Arab governments have backed the idea, but to many observers it seems impossible to pull off. Still, at the same time Clinton’s article appeared, King Abdullah II of Jordan published his own op-ed in the Washington Post titled: “A two-state solution would be a victory for our common humanity.”

“[L]et’s start with some basic reality,” he wrote. “The fact is that the thousands of victims across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have been overwhelmingly civilians…. Leaders everywhere have the responsibility to face the full reality of this crisis, as ugly as it is. Only by anchoring ourselves to the concrete facts that have brought us to this point will we be able to change the increasingly dangerous direction of our world….

“If the status quo continues, the days ahead will be driven by an ongoing war of narratives over who is entitled to hate more and kill more. Sinister political agendas and ideologies will attempt to exploit religion. Extremism, vengeance and persecution will deepen not only in the region but also around the world…. It is up to responsible leaders to deliver results, starting now.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters from An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Israel #HAMAS #Israel-Hamas war #war #history #diplomacy #war of disinformation #islamaphobia #anti-semitism

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