Felafel, from the Levant

Image credit: Wikipedia, By Popo le Chien - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52152914

Felafel is a chickpea pattie that, like hummus, is naturally vegan or vegetarian. These savoury balls have been a popular dish in the Levant for centuries. Chickpeas are one of the oldest crops known to humans. While the earliest evidence for chickpeas comes from Syria been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent for as many as 10,000 years, appearing to have been originally domesticated along with wheat, barley, peas and lentils. They appear to have been consumed as a staple food in the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1300 BCE). Chickpea cultivation also spread to Egypt and the Middle East from 3300 BEC onwards.

Also like hummus, felafel has a contested history, and there are many debates, claims and counterclaims around the origins of felafel. It is part of Palestinian cuisine, which itself fits within Syrian cuisine, a rich food culture which includes two major branches: Damascus cuisine and Aleppo cuisine.

​However, following the Nakba in 1947, felafel has been appropriated by Israel as an Israeli dish, a marker of Israeli identity. Even in Aotearoa, there is a Wellington-based Israel food truck, that serves felafel and hummus in pita bread, misleadingly describing this Arab dish as ‘authentic Israeli street food’.
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Links and references
Here’s why Palestinians object to the term ‘Israeli food’: It erases us from history - The Washington Post
Israel-Palestine: How food became a target of colonial conquest | Middle East Eye
Plant Based Arab
​The politics of hummus and those fearsome falafel | by The Palestine Project | Medium