New York magazine wrote Israelis out of New York City’s present-day culture and culinary history in its latest issue, including two long articles packaged under the title "Habibi City," both of which have been called out for blatant anti-Semitism.
One was “The New SWANA Scene in New York,” by Zaina Arafat. (SWANA stands for Southwest Asia and North Africa – Jews need not apply). One notorious sentence picked out by Ira Stoll, who penned “Under James Murdoch, New York Magazine Tilts Toward Hamas” for the Washington Free Beacon, was Arafat’s complaint that "While it has all been beautiful to witness, none of this means SWANA New Yorkers don’t still face xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism — along with the repercussions of speaking out against them.”
AIPAC says that sentence treats “Zionism as though it belongs in a list of identity-based hatreds erases what it actually means to millions of Jews: the belief that Jews, like other peoples, have a right to national self-determination and safety.”
The issue’s other story, “When Eating Out Is Political The Middle Eastern restaurant world has never been bigger, better, or more fraught,” was ostensibly about the New York City restaurant scene by features writer Madeline Leung Coleman. She wrote Israeli restaurants and chefs out of the picture, accusing them of appropriation and matter-of-factly accused Israel of genocide while ignoring the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.
In the 2010s, Israeli chefs — some who made their name in the U.S., some famous–in–Tel Aviv restaurateurs — started racking up wins in New York…..The self-fashioned pluralism of what the press sometimes called New Israeli cuisine mirrored and flattered New York’s cosmopolitan self-regard. It was salad-forward, za’atar-laden, full of grilled meats, flatbreads, and fenugreek. We were told this was the flavor profile of this young country, which was so richly funded and supported by our own….
The most popular dishes were Mizrahi, Arab, North African. Some were imported by Jewish immigrants. Many of the dishes were Palestinian. “Israeli cuisine is based on two things: on Palestinian cooking and on ethnic cooking,” an Israeli food editor told a reporter in 2013, joking that “if you want to succeed in Israeli cooking, you better have a Moroccan grandmother, and if you don’t — you better invent one.” The chef Meir Adoni, who does have one, said a crucial inspiration was “the Arabs’ influence.”….
There had been Israeli chefs in the city for nearly all of Israel’s existence. There had been Syrian and Lebanese chefs here even longer…
After that subtle denigration of Israeli chefs with hints of appropriation and lack of authenticity, Coleman got explicitly ideological.
Maybe there was a time when a lot of diners didn’t know the difference or care: Israeli or Iranian, it was all “Middle Eastern.” You’d have to work to ignore the difference now. In the three years since October 7, awareness of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and the wars that keep proliferating have turned eating out into just one more way people are expressing their views on Israel, on Gaza, on Lebanon, on Iran….while pro-Israel New Yorkers have doubled down on supporting Israeli restaurants, those horrified by the genocide are turning away — and toward chefs who they would rather support….
….
The new Middle Eastern restaurant owners are aware their food will be politicized — how could they not be? Restaurantgoers make their preferences known. Before October 7, a Jewish friend tells me, she thought nothing of going to Israeli restaurants like Miss Ada. After, horrified by Israel’s genocide, she and her other Jewish friends started consulting restaurants’ social-media posts to discern the owners’ political views before agreeing to eat there — while her pro-Israel parents became much more adamant about buying Israeli wine and eating at their preferred Israeli restaurant chain….
This line has received the most notoriety:
Ayat’s menus currently include a cheerful tourist-style map in which the land mass currently called Israel is titled “Discover Palestine.”….
The long article contained a single reference to Hamas -- a restaurant owner complaining about being called a “Hamas supporter” online. Their were no references to the massacres of Israeli civilians that occurred at a music festival. The article just skipped ahead in time in order to lie several times about what happened “after October 7” – “genocide” in Gaza.
Another massacre denied: Iran’s killing tens of thousands of its citizens, even while Iranian cuisine was constantly praised by Coleman: “The flavors are deep, savory, nonobvious, adult.”
(As Honest Reporting points out in its own critique, “Palestinian associations with regional food are treated as evidence of authentic inheritance. Jewish Middle Eastern traditions are something ‘imported.’”)
Two Israeli restaurants were described by a former manager “as ‘a safe space’ for Zionism,” while employees were being shocked by “the onslaught of horrifying images [sic] Palestinians in Gaza” on social media, before having “to turn around and show up to work at an Israeli restaurant….”
Forced to work with Jews, how awful.
