Did Rachael Ray Commit Cultural Genocide?

A couple of weeks ago, James Zogby, the founder of the Arab-American Institute, went bananas over hummus. His rant was sparked by celebrity chef Rachael Ray’s tweet about “Israeli nite” featuring a yummy assortment of Israeli dishes including hummus. “Cultural genocide!” exclaimed Zogby.

This reminds me of former President Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech where he listed all the things Muslims invented that they didn’t actually invent, like fountain pens, algebra and the compass. It’s puzzling why he didn’t mention hummus given the importance Muslims apparently attach to it. Perhaps the new chapter Obama wanted to open with the Muslim world would have succeeded if he’d remembered to mention this critical contribution to mankind.

Genocidal or just delicious? Rachael Ray’s “Israeli nite.” (Credit: Rachael Ray)

Also surprising is that Obama never mentioned Damascus steel. Anything used to better hack people with I’m prepared to believe Muslims developed.

I’ve no idea who invented hummus. What I am sure of is that Zogby is not a food historian, or much of a historian of anything else given that he accuses Israel of trying to “dispossess an entire nation and erase their heritage.”

Cries of cultural theft is a particularly slippery slope for Muslims. They’ve slapped a mosque on the Temple Mount. Talk about cultural appropriation. The only reason they put the mosque there some 50 years after invading Jewish territory in the 7^th century is that the Jews told them at the time that the site was holy. Around the 9^th century the Muslims even blocked off the Gate of Mercy when they learned that Jewish tradition foretold that the Messiah would enter through it. That was something in their interest to forestall. They better hope the Messiah doesn’t come. Hummus will be the least of their worries.

The main value of the Temple Mount to Muslims is that the Jews care about it. It can’t be too holy to Muslims the way they’ve treated it. The mosque had fallen into disrepair for centuries. That gold-plated dome is relatively new – put there in the 1920s by genocide-supporting, Hitler super-fan Haj Amin El-Husseini, who wanted to spruce it up in an effort to compete with Mecca.

And if more evidence was needed, every time Muslims pray on the Temple Mount they have their backs toward Jerusalem. They pray toward Mecca.  So here we have Muslims sticking a religious institution on someone else’s holy site – an act of cultural genocide if ever there was one – and they have the nerve to cry hummus?

Photo Credit: Creative Commons