The dishes parade on the tables of Little Egg, a narrow restaurant typical of Brooklyn, New York. A labné revisited with “French onion”, A rummaniyeh of lentils and pomegranates, then a traditional chicken musakhan renamed “shababi”. Dishes cooked by chef of Palestinian origin Marcelle Afram, who left her kitchen in Washington for an evening at the end of November. To the guests, he tells a part of his story, that of his grandparents forced into exile during the creation of Israel in 1948. “I cook with the words of memories”, he said.
He participates in “Tadhamon!” » (“solidarity”, in Arabic), first event organized by the Hospitality for Humanity association imagined by chefs, who launched, at the end of October, a petition for “break the silence around the genocide in Gaza. » Among the signatories, Helen Rosner, famous culinary reporter from New Yorker, Samin Nosrat, award-winning chef and cookbook author, and Stephen Satterfield, presenter of the documentary series The lion’s share. How African-American cuisine changed the United States, broadcast on Netflix. At the beginning of December, the document had been initialed by nearly one thousand two hundred people. “Unfortunately several of our colleagues who signed the text encountered serious backlash,” regrets one of the initiators, Ora Wise, chef and pro-Palestinian activist.
The petition, which condemns “the loss of all innocent life” without explicitly mentioning the massacres committed by Hamas on October 7, demands “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the end of unconditional US support for Israel. She also calls for joining the movement of “cultural boycott of Israel” And “to divest from products, events and travel that promote Israel until it dismantles its apartheid system and military occupation”.
Food, a powerful identity marker
The text refers to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which since 2005 has targeted companies operating in Israeli settlements or the occupied territories. “The BDS movement was started by Palestinians to create awareness, recalls chef Marcelle Afram. I like to think we have a lot of leverage as consumers. » If activist Ora Wise emphasizes that Hospitality for Humanity does not organize actions of this type, that does not prevent her from looking closely at what others are doing, notably in Philadelphia, where local pro-Palestinian groups have called to boycott Israeli restaurants whose owners have publicly shown their support for the Jewish state.
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