Palestinian-American author and journalist Laila El-Haddad spoke with Professor Tanya Bakhmetyeva, a modern European historian at the University, to explore the relationship between food and justice in Gaza on Feb. 3.
This was the fourth part of the year-long, seven-part series titled “Conversations on Israel, Palestine, and the War in Gaza,” sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies and the Department of Religion and Classics.
Professor of Jewish Studies Nora Rubel, who introduced El-Haddad, emphasized the importance of the talk.
“As someone who studies cookbooks, I recognize their profound cultural significance beyond recipes,” Rubel said. “They offer insights into social dynamics, power structures, and even acts of resistance through food.”
El-Haddad spoke on how Palestinians have used their farming and foraging knowledge as a form of resistance even though bakeries — an essential part of the food supply in Gaza — were among the first targets of the war.
Yousef Abu Rabee, a friend of El-Haddad, was a young farmer who sowed seeds in the middle of his village’s rubble as an act of resistance that offered hope to himself and his neighbors. Israeli forces later killed Abu Rabee.
“During the past 15 months, we have seen even in times of war and genocide […] Palestinians, like anyone else, must eat, must survive, but it seemed to take on a different element in Gaza,” El-Haddad said. “It was almost sort of an act of defiance.”
The dysfunction of Gaza’s food system is longstanding. To grasp the process of how Israel effectively starved Palestinians in North Gaza during this war, El-Haddad said, it is essential to examine the deeper historical context.
WikiLeaks cables revealed that Israel informed US officials in 2008 that they intended to keep Gaza on the brink of collapse, ensuring the population did not receive enough relief to thrive. Dov Weissglas, a former Israeli government advisor, dubbed this strategy the “Gaza Diet,” stating that the 2007 blockade’s goal was “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to let them die of hunger.”
Culinary resistance arises when traditional recipes and food culture are preserved during times of active erasure. Growing and preparing food under siege fosters that sense of survival and self-sufficiency, empowering individuals to perpetuate their history through food, said El-Haddad.
“In a war designed to strip us of our humanity and connection to the land,” El-Haddad said, “this was for us the ultimate act of resistance — to be able to take these plants to cook with and not to lose our rootedness to the land.”
