Where "Hospitality for Humanity" gets it wrong.

Now is not the time to boycott Israeli restaurants or discuss the origins of hummus.

My friends,

The world feels more unstable and dangerous than it has in so long; we are faced with the brutal and endless invasion of Ukraine; we are in the middle of a raging climate crisis; we are experiencing an attack on the foundations of democracy here in our country. And now this, a deadly struggle in the Middle East triggered by the murder and slaughter of peaceful civilians in Israel, including the torture of babies, grandparents, and children, at the hands of Hamas. We are also witnessing a strong Israeli response that is displacing and killing thousands of Palestinians, many of them also children. 

A shabbat dinner table is set every week for the hostages taken and held by Hamas on October 7th.

To be sure, I am devastated by what’s happening in the Middle East, and I am committed to the overall goal of a place with viable self-determination for the Palestinian people. Plenty of Jews in Israel, particularly those on that Kibbutz who were slaughtered on October 7th in their pajamas, were also in favor of that solution.

But you know who is not in favor of this? Hamas. Hamas is in favor of a ONE STATE SOLUTION that entails the evisceration of Israel and all Jewish people. Just today in the New York Times, Hamas’ leaders praised the operation, saying it is doing exactly what they planned: to set off a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them.

Hamas has no other purpose than to hunt down and murder Jews, as they did one month ago, killing them in their homes, at bus stops, and at music festivals; murdering, raping, and setting people on fire, while live-streaming their rampage to their followers and dragging children off into a hostage abyss.  

In the face of the extermination of 1400 Jews at the hands of terrorists, Jewish people were not greeted with support, expressions of empathy, or concern. Instead, we have seen a sharp and ugly spike in anti-semitism that has roiled college campuses and is rising up on the streets of peaceful communities across this country. 

We have endured calls for Free Palestine and for decolonization from those who call Hamas freedom fighters, words that valorize Hamas terrorists and blame defenseless children, Holocaust survivors, and teenagers at a music festival for their own mutilation. The common response to Israeli victims of torture and terrorism is, “Ah well, they deserved it!” 

As Bret Stephens observed in the New York Times: “October 8th wasn’t just the day after the single greatest atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, an atrocity whose details were impossible to miss because the perpetrators made sure to film them. It was the day when that atrocity was celebrated. Not just in places like Tehran, but also on the streets of Manhattan and on too many college campuses. And it was the day in which, instead of it being universally denounced by institutional leaders, we began to see it often ignored or addressed in belated and carefully parsed statements of regret.”

And now, we get to the point of this post, the reason I felt compelled to write this today. That is because antisemitism has come to roost in my own community of chefs, restaurateurs and hospitality ambassadors, with a group calling themselves Hospitality for Humanity organized by Reem Assil, Marcelle Afram, Omar Anani, Abeer Najjar, Kimberly Chou Tsun An, and Ora Wise.

In an article by Kim Severson in the New York Times, I learned about their petition, calling for “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war crimes,” which has been signed of hundreds of chefs and food writers including many I know and admire: Helen Rosner, Regina Schrambling, Tia Keenan, Betsy Andrews, Samin Nosrat, Alicia Kennedy, Hannah Selinger, and Marion Bull.

Other organizations, like the Philly Palestine Coalition, are boycotting Israeli- and Jewish-owned restaurants in Philadelphia like Zahav, Goldie’s, The Love, and more, restaurants owned by the Jewish restaurateurs Stephen Starr and Michael Solomonov. 

Oh, I should also mention that Reem and her lot would like to chat about whose hummus is it anyway! Really? How absurd. You want to argue that Israeli cooks are colonizers who have adopted Arabic dishes as their own, and thus contribute to the erasure of Palestinian culture? You want to talk about erasing culture? See 1942, Germany. See also, Mashhad, Persia, in the early 1900s, where my grandparents were born, but fled rather than be exterminated by Islamic rulers.

What’s most upsetting about these petitions and boycotts is what is not said. What is missing is any call for the return of over 200 hostages taken by Hamas. What is missing is any acknowledgment, much less a condemnation, of the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7th. I can’t seem to find any mention of the Jewish children and babies slaughtered and tortured in their homes while eating breakfast on a peaceful Saturday morning in their discussion of “war crimes.” 

What these petitions and boycotts amount to is plain: pure unadulterated antisemitism swathed in a veil of “humanity” and the rhetoric of “free Palestine.” These petitions and boycotts are a yellow star on an arm; a swastika sprayed onto a window, not in the dark of night, but in the light of day.

Chefs and food writers, and folks working in hospitality across this nation, have long been the first to respond in times of crisis: After 9/11 they came together as a scrappy bunch to feed first responders from ships docked on the West Side; they’ve long banded together to make sure children don’t go hungry (Share our Strength), to deliver meals for homebound elderly (City Meals on Wheels), and those living with HIV/AIDS (God's Love We Deliver). 

They cooked for thousands who lost their homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and turned their kitchens into food pantries during COVID. That’s what chefs do. They unite and cook; they make food the solution to every problem. That’s what makes this petition sting even more. 

Many years ago when a genocide raged in Darfur, it was the Jews who stood up. The American Jewish World Service led by Ruth Messinger was among the first to raise money for displaced refugees and awareness about the atrocities. Why were Jews setting off to save folks in Darfur? Because as Jews we saw what pure evil looked like, and we vowed Never Again. 

Back then, I founded Dining for Darfur, and with our hospitality community across the country, we raised thousands of dollars for refugees fleeing the genocide into Chad. (My work was covered by John Pendergast and Don Cheadle’s book Not on Our Watch)

And yet, no one remembers these acts of social justice. Our BLM brothers and sisters, who we championed in allyship marching together after George Floyd’s murder, celebrated Oct. 7 with a post extolling the Hamas paragliders (since removed) who slaughtered Jews at a music festival. Why? Because our world has a blind spot when victims are Jews. So many are eager to tuck into a very convenient and trending worldview — JEWS ARE COLONIALISTS AND PALESTINIANS ARE OPPRESSED, a neat black and white narrative that pits one side against the other. But there is no other side when it comes to Hamas. 

Hamas is a terrorist organization and their chosen victims were Jews. It is a terrorist organization that uses its aid to build tunnels to kill Israelis, not for Gazan’s education and infrastructure. The death of innocent Gazans is a strategy that is part of their Jihad. Hamas will hold onto those hostages and use them to keep the war going as long as possible because it serves them to foment hate. Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, told The New York Times in Doha, Qatar today: “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm…I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders.”

I mourn the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in this war. I’d love a cease fire and the end to war and devastation for everyone living through this hell. But I don’t know how you end a war when over 200 of your citizens are held by an enemy who has sworn to continue to kill your entire population until there are none left. 

And I don’t know why those who demand a cease-fire are not able to also condemn Hamas and its terrorist attacks on Israel. I suppose it’s that blind spot I was mentioning, the way people can’t seem to ever empathize with Jews. It’s the reason Jews will never feel safe, will always feel othered, because we will always be seen as oppressors, seen through one siloed prism, even though we lost 6 million innocent lives, murdered in gas chambers while the world watched. 

It’s enough to make a person an anxious insomniac and fairly despondent, and that accurately describes what’s happening to my soul at the moment. And yet, here we are. Today is all we have; we are all beating hearts, every one of us of value and worth, spinning around on this big blue planet in crisis. 

So instead of using food as a weapon, as these petitions urge, I’ll be using it as an olive branch, like Rachel Edri, the grandmother held hostage in her home, did with her Hamas captors. She fed them. Made them a nice lunch, gave them a cold Coke Zero. They asked for regular Coke. “But my diabetes,” she told them. “I only have Zero.” They understood. They spent hours in her home. They never killed her or her husband. (You can read the entire story here.)

So, no, I will not be joining Hospitality for Humanity. I will not ask our country to stop supporting Israel, and I will not boycott Jewish-owned restaurants and food shops. Here’s what I will do, and maybe you will choose to do the same. I’ll continue to support Israeli restaurants like Laser Wolf and Miss Ada. But I’ll also be gathering with friends at Palestinian restaurants — Al Badawi is a favorite—to show my support for their families and their children. Perhaps that is how we begin to change the narrative, one meal at a time.