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

Cookbook references: Coriander chickpea patties; Homemade felafel

Felafel is a bean pattie that is naturally vegan or vegetarian and is usually based on chickpeas, one of the oldest crops known to humans. While the earliest evidence for chickpeas comes from Syria, there is evidence that chickpeas have been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent for as many as 10,000 years - they appear to have been originally domesticated along with wheat, barley, peas and lentils. Chickpeas seem to have been consumed as a staple food in the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1300 BCE) and chickpea cultivation also spread to Egypt and the Middle East from 3300 BEC onwards. 

Thousands of years later, food cultures in the Levant began incorporating beans into savoury balls which became known as felafel. There are many debates, claims and counterclaims around the origins of this dish. It may have emerged during the fourth century in association with the Coptic community in Egypt, who prepared felafel as a meat-free dish that was consumed during Lent. Early forms of this dish appears to have been prepared using Fava beans, leading to the name felafel. By the early twentieth century, felafel was widely consumed throughout the Arab world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Turkey and as far south as Yemen.

Felafel also features significantly within Palestinian cuisine, which itself aligns with Syrian food culture. However, in the mid-twentieth century, felafel was appropriated by Zionist settlers as a marker of Israeli identity. Israeli scholars Ronald Ranta and Yonatan Mendel describe this claim on Palestinian food as part of a Zionist project (similar to the concept of the 'new Jew') to claim local foods as their own, deliberately bypassing their own traditions and creating a ‘new’ food culture that tried to localise the colonists as Indigenous. Israeli institutions have described foods such as felafel as either being associated with Zionism, or as having been brought to Israel by Mizrahi Jews. There are even Israeli songs claiming felafel - in 1958 the singer Dan Almagor released 'Ve-Lanu Yesh Falafel', with lyrics that described felafel as Israel's national dish. A well-known Israeli postcard portrays a huge mountain of pita bread and felafel with an Israeli flag waving on the summit. 

Food culture and national identity are closely interwoven, and Israel continues to appropriate Palestinian cuisine. However, felafel remains a symbol of resistance and connection for Palestinians around the world.
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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
​Consuming Palestine: Palestine and Palestinians in Israeli food culture - Ronald Ranta, Yonatan Mendel, 2014
The Origin of Falafel | History Today
Falafel: A Palestinian Staple and Cultural Icon


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