The many facades of Pittsburgh eatery, Conflict Kitchen. The restaurant serves dishes from locations that are experiencing conflict with the Untied States in an effort to foster both dialogue and understanding.
PITTSBURGH, Penn. — Pittsburgh’s most famous culinary achievement may be a working-class sandwich heaving with meat, cheese, french fries and coleslaw, but a small take-out counter in a university neighborhood is gaining national attention for offering a rotating menu based on countries with which the United States is in some sort of conflict.
In the four-and-a-half years since Conflict Kitchen opened, it has based menus on Afghan, North Korean, Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan foods. The goal is not just to introduce the Steel City’s palette to exotic flavors, but to foster dialogue about U.S. foreign policy and national interests.
“We need to form our own opinions, admit our own ignorance, ask questions,” Dawn Weleski, a San Francisco-based artist and one of the founders of Conflict Kitchen, told MintPress News.
“For there to be a healthy arts community, a healthy democracy, we need to support artists and critics … writers willing to take time to work through the story and really understand … and media outlets willing to approach issues objectively and use best practices,” Weleski said.
The wrappers, the food, the community events that run alongside each menu — everything is designed to prompt diners to reflect upon geopolitical issues, cultures and people that they may only know through mainstream media reporting and polarizing political agendas.
Yet when Conflict Kitchen unveiled its latest iteration — a Palestinian menu — on Oct. 6, it drew much more than curious diners eager to participate in dialogue. Jewish organizations, media outlets, and even a funder have hurled strong, sometimes scathing, criticism at Conflict Kitchen, calling the wrappers and community events anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, and one-sided.
Meanwhile, an investigation is still ongoing into death threats that forced the restaurant to close for five days in early November.
Despite all of this controversy — or maybe even because of it — the Palestinian menu has been the restaurant’s most popular iteration to date. At its peak, 400 people visited the restaurant each day to eat Palestinian dishes on the metal tables and chairs set up in Schenley Park.
Weleski told MintPress that Conflict Kitchen did anticipate “people to be stirred” by the Palestinian menu, but they’re interpreting the menu’s popularity as a positive reaction — a sign that people are curious and want to know more about Palestine and Palestinian people.
“Palestine is a sensitive topic, probably the most sensitive conflict in the world right now — or at least that the media will pay attention to,” she said, noting that like previous menus, the restaurant’s planned Sub-Saharan menu likely won’t get as much attention as the current Palestinian iteration.
Still, Weleski stressed: “It’s not about being on one side of the other, but about understanding the lives of Palestinians.”
Defining conflict, even as it’s playing out
In late October, B’nai B’rith International, the world’s oldest Jewish service organization, called on the Heinz Endowments to “disavow” a $50,000 grant it had provided to Conflict Kitchen in 2013.
In response, Grant Oliphant, president of the Heinz Endowments, which is chaired by Teresa Heinz-Kerry, wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, told B’nai B’rith in a letter that the grant money did not go toward supporting the Palestinian menu and programming, “and we would not fund such a program, precisely because it appears to be terribly at odds with the mission of promoting understanding.”
According to B’nai B’rith, Oliphant noted that “[the Endowment] emphatically does not agree with or support either the anti-Israel sentiments quoted on Conflict Kitchen’s food wrappers or the program’s refusal to incorporate Israeli or Jewish voices in its material.”
Citing the grant agreement, Conflict Kitchen said in a statement on its website that the grant from the Heinz Endowments was meant “[t]o support Conflict Kitchen’s new programming and development at its new location in Schenley Plaza.”
Oliphant also asserted that the Conflict Kitchen would not be the recipient of any other funding from the Heinz Endowment.
Yet on Monday Conflict Kitchen co-founder Jon Rubin, the recipient of this year’s Carol R. Brown Established Artist Award, was awarded $15,000 from The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Heinz Endowment. While accepting the award, Rubin told the 200 people in attendance: “I have decided to put it entirely into the Palestinian version of Conflict Kitchen.”
“The money will allow me to bring more Palestinian voices into our city and add greater depth to an iteration of a project that I very strongly believe in, and secondly this will provide a great opportunity to the funders of this award to stand up against the criticism that will certainly come their way because of the use of these funds.”
Speaking directly to Oliphant, who was seated in the front row at the event, Rubin said: “The Endowments had reinforced the bullying tactics of powerful lobbying groups and created a less-secure environment for their funded project to do its work in.”
“Conflict Kitchen’s focus on countries in conflict is honorable, but Palestine is not in conflict with the U.S.,” said Gregg Roman, director of Community Relations Council at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, as reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette shortly after the new menu was introduced.
“The restaurant is stirring up conflict for the sake of trying to be relevant,” he asserted. (MintPress was unsuccessful in its attempts to contact Roman.)
As Weleski noted, however, what constitutes a conflict is “not as cut and dry as it seems.”
“What are the United States’ national interests? What is the definition of ‘conflict?’” she said. “It’s not as simple as armed conflict. It’s not as simple as an economic embargo.”
Conflict, she says, can be defined as a discrepancy in aid.
“U.S. support for Palestine from 2006 to today” has consisted of “very inconsistent aid,” while U.S. aid to Israel totals “$3 billion a year, consistently, with no strings attached, by and large. Most of that goes toward military aid.”
“How aid exists — that inconsistency — is a way to look at conflict.”
Despite the fuss kicked up by the Jewish and Israeli communities in Pittsburgh and beyond, many members of those communities and others have made it clear that organizations like the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh do not speak for them.
A petition denouncing the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s efforts to suppress Palestinian voices and wage war on Conflict Kitchen received almost 2,200 signatures. Though the goal was to gain 3,000 signatures, it has already been presented to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and to Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, who is asked “to express publicly his support for freedom of speech and coexistance (sic) of all communities in the city and instruct law enforcement to protect Conflict Kitchen.”
While the mayor’s office has yet to respond, the Jewish Federation released a statement on Nov. 10, in which the organization “unequivocally condemn[s] threats of violence directed at any of our neighbors in Pittsburgh.”
“Attempts to silence Conflict Kitchen are diametrically opposed to the Jewish community’s desire to engage in the broadest dialogue around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” it continued, urging Conflict Kitchen to stop disseminating literature and promoting programming that “is hurtful and incites against Israelis and Jews.”
Dr. Naftali Kaminski, an Israeli physician and scientist, worked with Dr. Michael Zigmond to write the petition.
“We declared victory when we got 2,000 signatures. Within one day, we had 1,000 signatures. In two days, 2,000. I was amazed!” he told MintPress, noting that the petition is still active because people are still signing it.
Kaminski, who lived in Pittsburgh for over 10 years before moving last year, said Israelis in Pittsburgh “seemed disgusted with the Federation” and its actions to “heavy-handedly bully.” The Israeli community in Pittsburgh is diverse, he said, and it’s offensive for the Jewish Federation to attempt to speak on behalf of the entire community.
“I felt the need to say it’s [Conflict Kitchen’s Palestinian menu, literature and programming] not offensive, you’re offensive,” Kaminski said.
In a Nov. 18 op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Kaminski also raised serious questions about how the Jewish Federation is hampering open dialogue on Israel, especially when the government’s actions are brought into question.
“To many,” Kaminski wrote, the Jewish Federation’s campaign against Conflict Kitchen “was just another confirmation that, when it comes to Israel’s subjugation of Palestinian life and land, the Jewish Federation often represents the Netanyahu government instead of the Jewish community in Pittsburgh.”
Likewise, the Pittsburgh chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, a grassroots organization working toward peace between Israel and Palestine, recently posted a blog entry to Muzzlewatch which questions the Jewish Federation’s attacks on Conflict Kitchen.
“None of the Palestinian perspectives given voice through the Conflict Kitchen’s events or materials is simply anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic,” Ella Mason wrote. “But many do share the real oppression they face as a consequence of the Occupation.”
“The Federation and B’nai Brith claim that this material makes Israel look bad. I am inclined to agree. But the problem isn’t that the material is ‘anti-Israel.’ The problem is that Israel is committing some truly atrocious acts. Ultimately the Federation isn’t struggling against the Conflict Kitchen, they are struggling against reality itself,” Mason concluded.
Speaking to MintPress, Mason said, “One thing that’s very important about the Jewish Federation or other organizations equating things like this with anti-Semitism is that it really devalues the term and makes it harder to unmask real, true anti-Semitism.”
“Fragmenting and isolating Palestinian communities”
Patrons dine outside of the Conflict Kitchen, A Pittsburgh eatery that features dishes from various conflict zones around the world.
In late November, MintPress spoke to Stephen Joyce, a student at Bard College, who was eating at Conflict Kitchen — “for probably the 25th time” — and taking pictures to appear alongside an upcoming story on the restaurant in the college’s new human rights journal, The Draft.
Joyce described himself as being “usually very hands off” on the Israel-Palestine issue but “very pro-Palestinian food,” which reflects an important point: the controversy is not about the food itself, but a small, vocal minority’s objections to the restaurant’s move to present an alternative narrative about Palestine.
“Whenever you do speak about Palestinian issues, there is a backlash from the Zionist community that doesn’t want to see the Palestinian community express itself,” Omar Abu Hejleh, a lawyer who also runs Allegro Hearth Bakery in Pittsburgh’s traditionally Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood, told MintPress.
Hejleh also serves as a spokesperson for the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee.
When Palestinian voices and perspectives are highlighted, he said, the Israeli and Zionist communities take offense “because it puts them in a negative light.”
He noted that Conflict Kitchen’s programming includes plenty of public forums for every voice to be heard on these issues. “It’s a forum for people with the Zionist perspective to come forward and challenge ideas at events — but they haven’t,” he said, adding that it’s difficult for Israel to “defend itself against about 80 years of how it’s treated Palestine.”
Since the inception of the state of Israel in 1948, Israel has occupied Palestinian territories using military force, denied Palestinians the right of return, and established strict controls of Palestinians’ movement in and out of Palestinian territories. More recently, the Israeli government has even approved expanding settlements in Palestinian territories.
One of the interviews Conflict Kitchen conducted with Palestinians in Palestine and the U.S., asserts that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank served three key functions:
“The first is territorial; it’s about fragmenting and isolating Palestinian communities. The second is to control the distribution of resources. Water, land and government services are taken away from Palestinians and given to Jewish settlers. The third is surveillance. In the Occupied Territories, all the settlements are on hills; this gives them a military advantage and lets the settlers watch the Palestinians.”
More than hummus and falafel
Notes taped to a window of the Conflict Kitchen in Pittsburgh, PA.
“We can’t represent Palestinian food or the whole of the Palestinian perspective,” Conflict Kitchen’s Weleski told MintPress. “This is a taste, it’s a conversation starter, to get people interested.”
Like the cuisine of any other culture or country, it can be difficult to identify what exactly is Palestinian cuisine.
Hejleh, the lawyer and bakery owner, told MintPress that even though he’s lived in the West Bank and that’s where his family is from, he didn’t even recognize some of the dishes on the Conflict Kitchen menu.
One he did recognize, though, was the maftoul — a chicken soup with chickpeas and large balls of Palestinian couscous.
“My grandma would ship that [the couscous dough] to my mom because she couldn’t make it. It’s a lost craft,” said Hejleh, whose parents moved to the U.S. from Palestine in the early 1960s.
Robert Sayre, the culinary director of Conflict Kitchen, told MintPress that most of the restaurant’s Palestinian menu is based primarily on dishes served in the West Bank because that’s where Conflict Kitchen visited to learn about Palestinian food, speak to Palestinians, and cook with them in their homes and restaurants. As a take-out kiosk, the menu also features popular street foods like falafel and shawarma.
“The cuisine of Gaza is representative of more than Gaza — it’s the wider area surrounding it,” Sayre said, noting that three different regions represent different aspects of Palestinian cuisine: Gaza, the West Bank, and Galilee.
“There are some staple dishes eaten throughout the entire area,” he said, explaining that there are also some differences due to geographical differences and available resources.
Located in an area with rocky terrain and high rainfall, Galilee cuisine strongly features rice dishes and variations on kibbee — a kind of fried meatball made of cracked wheat, onions, and ground meat, like lamb, beef, goat, or camel. Food in Gaza includes many of the fixtures of the food of the Greater Levant and even the Mediterranean, but also includes a variety of seafood and liberal doses of chili peppers.
However, Israeli-imposed borders are having a distinct impact on what’s eaten in the West Bank. One of the interviews included on Conflict Kitchen’s wrapper notes:
“Even though we’re only 10 or 15 miles from the sea, Israel lies in between, so people in the West Bank and Jordan are not really fish eaters. Our bay is called Al-Aqba; it’s too small to meet the needs of the people, so we have to import fish. One kilo of good fish costs 70 shekels — a whole day’s wage — and it’s probably only enough to feed one child. For this reason, people don’t really eat fish.”
While dishes like hummus, falafel, and baklawa feature heavily in Palestinian cuisine, they’re not necessarily Palestinian. They’re eaten throughout the Middle Eastern world and are available almost anywhere that the Middle Eastern diaspora has spread. A mezza platter — a spread usually consisting of a variety of pickled vegetables, hummus, baba ganoush, and bread — could be found as easily at an Israeli-run restaurant as a Palestinian-run one.
“Those particular items are generic, common to the Greater Levant, and part of a geographic continuum,” Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian journalist and author of “The Gaza Kitchen,” a cookbook that combines kitchen-tested recipes, history, and interviews with the people of the Gaza Strip.
“The food doesn’t end at so-and-so border,” she told MintPress, explaining that with dishes like hummus and shakshuka, which have been made by Arab peoples for millennia, it’s difficult for any one culture or country to claim it as their own.
“On the one hand, there’s the notion of cuisine extending beyond borders, becoming part of that continuum,” El-Haddad explained. “On the other hand, there’s the issue of ownership when it comes to food because when someone uses that to deny someone their culture or to appropriate it, then the food becomes political and another aspect of colonization.”
One dish on the Conflict Kitchen menu is described as a “national dish” of Palestine: musakhan.
“Ask a Palestinian, ‘What is the most common dish?’ ‘What do you make most regularly?’” El-Haddad said, explaining that musakhan would likely be the answer. “It’s the standard family dish you make on the weekend or when you have guests.”
On the wrapper, someone interviewed by Conflict Kitchen described the dish: “It’s just a round piece of bread with chicken, onions, and a ton of sumac. That’s it! Simple but delicious.”