Original subtitles

(somber music)

(gunshot)

(people shouting)

The trouble checkpoint dividing Israel's capital Jerusalem

from the Palestinian west bank.

Today it's just another battle in a divided land.

A home claimed by both Arabs and Jews.

(crowds shouting)

Hey, wait a minute.

It's not just a battle over land.

I'm here to lift the lid on another war,

raging in the kitchen.

(upbeat music)

Butt this war has no soldiers, bullets, rockets, or tanks.

Just chickpeas and hummus.

(upbeat music)

It has all the usual suspects,

Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine.

I think that hummus is an Israelian food.

Wait, hummus? Israeli?

Hummus is a Lebanese invention.

I'll go wherever the Battlefront takes me

to find the hummus warriors on both sides.

You know, there is a very big argue between us and Arab,

who made the hummus.

(speaking foreign language)

I want to know, can a nation own a food?

And I had this mad idea, could a regional love of hummus

be the recipe for peace in the middle east.

When you eat together, you can't betray each other.

The lamb will dwell with the lion.

Hummus makes love not war.

(upbeat music)

Wikipedia list, six different spellings for hummus.

It's a dip made from chickpeas, cooked and mashed,

blended with tahini, lemon juice, salt, and garlic.

Hummus is a staple in the middle east,

and now on supermarket shelves in New York, Paris, London,

and Sydney, where I live.

I don't know. I can't read.

Its Hebrew that's why.

(laughs)

The war broke out when Israel began exporting hummus,

claiming it as an Israeli product.

(speaking foreign language)

We consider this theft.

In reality it's not different to stealing land.

So in 2008, a bunch of outraged hummus producers

in Lebanon decided to Sue Israel in an international court

firing up a battle over who owns it

and which country invented it.

(speaking foreign language)

You know, to have the audacity to write that this is

an Israeli traditional dish is beyond belief.

Listen, we are in a war with them for years.

So what do you expect from them to say what?

Good things on us? What?

They are among the best subtle thieves in the world.

(laughs)

If you want a strong language, here you are.

What mystery is it?

You know the last five years in Israel

every two shops sell sushi.

Sushi, you know it's Japanese food.

Japanese say we stole. This is food. People eat food.

Israel launched a preemptive strike,

(instrumentals)

with a giant plate of hummus.

And as of Friday afternoon,

the Israeli Arab town of Abu Goshen snatched a world record

from chief rival Lebanon with a four ton batch

of the Mediterranean delicacy.

(crowd cheering)

But the Lebanese fight back,

an even bigger missile.

In may, 2010, Beirut chefs reclaimed the world record

with a hummus dish weighing 11.5 tons,

more than doubling the previous Israeli record.

I watched amazed as the hummus war went far over

across the globe on the internet, YouTube and Facebook.

(speaking foreign language)

There is no such thing as Israeli cuisine.

Then Goliath and his gallant band attacked

on land and on sea defying the sinners of Babylon.

Then as the Israelis and Lebanese traded blows,

team Palestine joined the bake-off

with their own culinary claims.

(speaking foreign language)

(upbeat music)

It's just a dried up wrinkled pea.

So why does it's signature dish arouse so much passion?

Is hummus more than just a tasty dip.

Can it tell a story about who we are and where we come from?

(soft music)

My hummus story starts far away from the chickpea

frontline in another era at the bottom of the world.

(bell chiming)

we were a typical Australian family growing up

in the sixties in Melbourne, in a suburb called Sunshine,

mom and dad, and my big sister and me,

a budgie and a dog called sausage.

(dog barking)

When I was a kid, I thought there were three types of food,

canned spaghetti, meat pies and chips with tomato sauce

and vanilla slices.

(drum beats)

The one bright spot in Sunshine was popcorn and movies

at the sunshine pitcher theater.

(instrumentals)

As a child, I was irresistibly drawn to Hollywood epics

with big stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton,

and Charlton Heston.

(upbeat music)

And then she appeared.

(upbeat music)

When I was 17, I fell in love

with a caftan wearing Jewish girl.

It was lust at first sight.

(soft music)

When Juliette took her goy boy home to meet her parents,

we ate the most fabulous Jewish food,

chicken soup with Knaidlach.

I had landed in food heaven.

(bells chiming)

On our way home from school Juliet and I would stop off

at Lebanese house.

(soft music)

We'd buy falafel and Pita with lashings of creamy

dribbly hummus, and then we'd make love.

Two cavorting hummus loving hippies with our long hair,

anti-war politics and beads.

(sighs)

At the end of the school year, Julia packed her bags

and left for a kibbutz in the hummus promised land, Israel.

I imagined my girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend on a kibbutz

eating as much hummus as her heart desired.

(soft music)

Our hummus dates were over.

(sobbing)

But love and lust, hummus and hormones, for me,

these were lasting ingredients.

I became a hummus tragic.

So when the hummus war erupted in the middle east,

I was intrigued and hungry for more.

(upbeat music)

I've come to the Palestinian town of Ramallah

where even the PLO took to the trenches.

How are you?

Hi trevor. How are you? Nice to see you.

Nice to see you.

So I call on its most well-known public face,

Dr. Hannan Ashrawi.

Well, hummus is a very important part of our culture,

of our identity.

It's not just a food. It's not just a type of a meal.

But it is part of our history.

It's part of the fact that we do have a distinct identity

and that as we see everything else being taken away from us,

we don't want to see our cuisine also confiscated.

(classical music)

Like any good stoush,

the hummus war has history.

Two former American vessels

carrying nearly 4,000 Jewish refugees arrive

at the port of Haifa, Palestine.

Jammed like cattle-

After world war II and the show up of Holocaust

tens of thousands of Jewish exiles crossed the Mediterranean

desperately seeking a new homeland.

They flocked to the British mandate of Palestine,

then home to over a million Palestinians

and a growing Jewish population determined to establish

a new Jewish state.

It was a recipe for disaster.

(loud explosion)

Tit for tat terrorist attacks turned into open warfare,

Jews against Arabs, Arabs against Jews.

The British mandate in Palestine

was about to end however, and the United nations

was debating the partition of Palestine between the Jews

and the Arabs as a solution to the turmoil in that country.

In may of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel was born

in a mass of blood.

(Somber music)

By wars end, there was no peace,

only a ceasefire and refugees on both sides.

(Somber music)

Over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled

creating a refugee crisis that continues today.

(soft music)

I'm following the hummus trail to Bethlehem.

(soft music)

It's a Palestinian city in the west bank,

just 10 kilometers from Israel's capital Jerusalem.

Here in the birthplace of Jesus, many Palestinian Christians

found refuge and brought their tasty hummus heritage

like cafe owner, 1George Salamae.

(speaking foreign language)

(upbeat music)

Palestinian's weren't the only ones uprooted

by the upheavals of 1948 and the subsequent

Arab-Israeli wars.

(upbeat music)

Middle Eastern Jews known as Sephardim were also expelled

or left voluntarily from their homelands

in Northern Africa, Egypt and Iraq.

They came to Israel, their suitcases stuffed

with more than clothes.

(upbeat music)

I'm in Jerusalem visiting hummus maker and DJ 1Ury levee.

Hummus with the hummus peas and the hummus with 1full.

1Ury's family came from Iraq where Jews had lived

for several thousand years until one day

they were told to leave.

So they kick their ass and tell them go.

Right now you have 24 hours to leave the country,

you know what, we'll kill you.

And then they left everything that they had,

home, property, everything.

They come just like this.

You don't say I'm gonna eat hummus, you're gonna wipe hummus

with your hand.

You have to see the pita. You have to feel the hummus.

It's sort of ceremony. The minute we eat together.

The minute we are a group.

The minute I'm connected to the people, like Facebook.

You have a lot of friends. Okay? I have a lot of friends.

I'm worth something.

(people speaking inaudibly)

At another hummus joint, I arranged to meet

Janna Gur, a hummus friendly fanatic.

Her family came to Israel from Russia when she was 16.

Author of The Book of New Israeli Food,

Janna has a half a dozen different hummus recipes

and an international perspective on the hummus war.

Throughout history of food, everywhere,

recipes and dishes move from place to place,

from the country to the country.

And that's how culinary culture,

that's how food culture works.

And that's the beauty for me of Israeli food culture.

Because we are such a small country with so many

Jewish ethnic groups coming together

and yet everything is mixed up.

So there is Jerusalem hummus that is fluffier and lighter.

And there is Galilean that is chunkier.

And there is Jaffa, which I think is spicier.

There are differences from village to village

or from hummus joint to hummus joint.

Hummus is now so popular in Israel,

they've even coined a new Hebrew word,

hummusiah for hummus joint.

(instrumentals)

On a corner in the heart of Jerusalem is a hummusiah,

just as famous as the man who runs it.

All my life is hummus. I dream about hummus.

I make hummus. I love hummus. I talk with hummus.

Meir Micha is a real top gun in a hummus war.

Everybody knows me. Everybody invites me.

Wherever I go, "oh, Mr. Pinatti. Mr. Pinatti."

Its not my name Mr. Pinatti.

But because the restaurant named Pinatti,

it's mean in Hebrew corner.

It's in corner.

They call me Mr. Pinatti.

Don't talk with the phone. Swallow, don't chew.

Its lunch time now.

(speaking foreign language)

Don't talk on the phone now. Its lunch time.

(utensils clattering)

What I'm discovering on this journey

is that no matter where people are from

hummus is in their blood.

My grandfather, you know, Jewish used to live in Turkey.

And he decided to come to Israel.

And after the first world war, when he come to Jerusalem,

he open this very, very small store,

only for hummus and falafel.

And then I watch as a kid, what they're doing.

And I start to love the business.

Fire. (loud explosion)

Fire. (loud explosion)

(man screeaming) (loud explosion)

As it turns out, hummus, Palestine and this story

are in my blood too.

(soft music)

My father, corporal John Hank Graham served

in the middle east during world war II in what was then

the British mandate of Palestine.

When I was a child, dad would pull out his war medals,

his photographs and hand colored postcards,

souvenirs from Jerusalem.

He'd put on his Kofia or Palestinian headdress.

Dad would tell stories about the hummus and olives he ate,

exotic Palestinian women, the Al-Aqsa mosque

and the wailing wall.

(soft music)

Dad loved Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world.

(soft music)

Three great faiths lay claim to its ancient alleyways,

Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

But its holiness comes at a price.

The old city along with Arab east Jerusalem was captured,

annexed and occupied by Israel in the 1967, six-day war.

It's been disputed territory ever since.

Israel's annexation isn't recognized

under international law.

(sirens wailing)

Palestinians regard east Jerusalem as their capital

of a future Palestinian state.

(somber music)

But Israel has declared all of Jerusalem

as its eternal capital.

Jerusalem has been extracted from the heart of Palestine.

And we are telling the Palestinians that the very source

of value that you have is no longer yours

and that we can prevent you from even having access to it.

Not just access to your livelihood, access to your produce,

access to your restaurants, to your hummus,

to everything else, but access to that which imbues

your life with meaning and value.

And they've done that.

But in old Jerusalem I discover a fortress

of Palestinian hummus and pride, Lina.

Here, the hummus to die for.

Lightly spiced with garlic and jalapeno pepper.

(objects thumping)

(soft music)

Maybe the secret's in it's making the old fashioned way.

(soft music)

For my taste buds, it's one of the best.

Its great. Fantastic.

(soft music)

Caleb Zadie is a prince of Palestinian hummus.

(speaking foreign language)

Lina crosses the battle lines.

It's Palestinian, but it's hummus is just as popular

with hungry Israeli soldiers occupying the old city.

(speaking foreign language)

(upbeat music)

A world away from the religious history

and strife of Jerusalem is party city Tel Aviv.

(upbeat music)

The hummus joints here are just as popular and ultra trendy.

(upbeat music)

I'm visiting Shooky Galili, the hummus guy.

He's an Israeli journalist and blogger.

The founder of hummus 101, a website for global compulsives

infatuated with chickpeas.

It's a heady mix of food, hummus politics, history,

fun and crazy opinion.

Hummus is not a food, hummus is a subculture. Okay?

Okay. It was a dish made in order to be eaten.

Sometimes in the past, but no, it's much more

than that today.

You have hummus jokes. You have hummus out.

You don't have this with other foods.

And this one is the hummus sexual.

This is called hummus vs Hamas.

By the way, while were on the topic. Hamas evil,

hummus, delicious.

(audience laughing)

I think that's how Hamas got elected over there.

They thought they were voting for hummus.

(audience laughing)

'Cause there's no way that the people would elect

an evil terrorist group unless they mistook them

for a yummy Mediterranean dip.

(audience laughing)

They must have been on the ballot like, "hummus? Yes."

(audience laughing)

"Of course we want hummus. We love hummus.

What, am I gonna not vote for hummus?

Who doesn't like hummus?"

(vehicles honking)

Hummus Ashkara has a reputation for offering

the best in Tel-Aviv.

Here the hummus is light and fluffy.

(car alarm sounding)

It's one of only two places I've found run by women.

(speaking foreign language)

Ruth Tavour is hands on and likes to get

her hummus just right.

The hummus start by that we clean the chickpeas.

And then you have to wash it like this, part by part,

with your hands.

This is very boiled. You see. Now it's boiled.

And this is a cold water in a temperature of a freezer.

Then start for the first mash.

This is our first mash.

I've discovered that Israel was a land

of self appointed hummus experts.

This is the best place in town-

Everyone here has an opinion

on the tastiest hummus they've ever eaten,

the finest recipe and the unsurpassed hummus joint.

(speaking foreign language)

And in Bethlehem, Palestinian cabbies

have their favorites too.

(speaking foreign language)

(upbeat music)

I'm on my way to Lebanon. Where the hummus war began.

(upbeat music)

I can travel here, but Israeli hummus lovers can't.

Technically the two countries are still at war,

so hummus trade and tasting is just a dream.

(upbeat music)

(speaking foreign language)

I've been summoned to a gastronomic landmark

in the Capital Beirut, the Sultan Brahim restaurant.

Tourism minister Fadi Abboud wants me to sample

the complete arsenal of Lebanese hummus.

When you go to a Lebanese restaurant,

the typical Lebanese restaurant serving the meza,

which are the order of,

they wouldn't even ask if you want hummus.

Because it goes for granted that hummus is there

and around the hummus comes everything else.

But you know, this is the classical hummus

and everything else, as you can see has been sort of

invented by the chef.

And different restaurants will have other mixes.

But as you can see, you know, you have all these derivatives

of hummus and everyone has its particular taste.

Fall in love and make love around hummus.

(soft music)

Soussi is also a hummus institution in downtown Beirut.

The hummus here is in my top 10 for its taste

and its texture.

(soft music)

(speaking foreign language)

And to prove his claim that hummus is a Lebanese creation,

Raji Kebbe shows me family photographs dating back

to the 19th century.

(speaking foreign language)

We're not saying that there were no Jews

in the middle east who enjoyed the same cuisine

as everybody else.

Indeed there were.

But this does not make hummus an Israeli traditional dish.

Doesn't really differ from like, you know,

stealing the land, building resettlements now

and asking the world, "were there any Palestinians?

We didn't see them. There were nobody living here."

(upbeat music)

Nothing symbolizes the Palestinian Israeli divide

more than Israel's separation wall.

The conflict of this land is the conflict for many years.

And I think Israel has its own right to exist

and Jewish people, they have their own right

to be here in Israel.

When complete the 760 kilometer barrier

will traverse the entire west bank encircling

and isolating recent Jewish settlements

from established Palestinian villages.

The wall is much more than just a physical impediment.

It is the embodiment of the ugliness of the occupation.

The worst hoarders that you can see in the occupation.

I've always described it as their attempt

to steal your horizon.

Their attempt to prevent you from seeing beyond

this Grey, ugly cement wall.

But of course, they imprisoned themselves on the other side

because they steal their own horizon.

(upbeat music)

Since 1967, when Israel occupied the west bank

in the six-day war, more than 100 Jewish settlements

have been established on Palestinian territory.

Considered a violation of international law,

they are the front line in this divided land.

You don't have the solution to this question. Okay.

Because, our father, father said that all the land was ours.

And from the beginning, they took the land from us.

So the hummus was our for the first, okay.

And then if you ask the Lebanese, they say,

"what do you say? You took our land? You took our hummus."

But you see the fact.

We have the same food. We all eat it.

In Israel, it's largely Palestinians

manning the kitchens.

They say you are what you eat.

So it's ironic don't you think that Israelis love to swallow

Arab-made hummus.

Who is it that works in your kitchen?

All Arabs. We work together.

Five o'clock in the morning, we come together to work.

We start making food.

Is that because they make the best hummus?

Of course. Of course.

Incredible hummus.

Everyday I taste it, everyday it's like the first day.

I love my stuff. It's the best.

Better than sex though?.

No. Never say that. With the sex.

Delicious.

Hummus and sex. Now that sounds familiar.

Tasty hummus, combined with midlife crisis hormones

usurped my love life yet again.

(upbeat music)

When I was in my forties, I met a young Syrian woman

at a film festival in Toronto.

Lisa Marie raised in the US was gorgeous, sharp-witted,

a champion of Arab Palestinian rights.

And Lisa had other passions that we shared,

wiping plates off, you guessed it, creamy hummus.

With a Syrian father and a Lebanese mother,

chickpeas were in her blood.

(upbeat music)

But I was nearly 20 years older and our mutual passion,

love of hummus couldn't change that.

(metals clanging)

(people murmuring inaudibly)

This isn't a silly as it all sounds.

There are interesting theories about hummus and sex.

It's says in quotes, "hummus instead of Viagra."

Hummus has two molecules, citrulline and arginine,

which are considered good for sexual health.

I don't know if the hard ons I get are because I eat hummus

or in spite of eating hummus.

(speaking foreign language)

Do you get lovers coming here?

Lovers? Lovers.

(speaking foreign language)

No, it's not place for lovers.

Lovers usually its candle and wine.

(indistinct)

Enough of this, let's get out of the bedroom

and back to the hummus war and the question,

where does it come from?

So far, it's been a minefield of politics,

breast beating and conjecture.

Still I'd like some answers.

Did Jesus munch hummus at his last supper?

(upbeat music)

Perhaps Moses Wolfed down chickpeas as he delivered

his people to the promised land.

(upbeat music)

Can anyone nation or people rightly claim they own it?

Meir Shalev is an acclaimed Israeli novelist who tossed

a biblical grenade into the hummus war.

Mia has a passion for the old Testament

as a Chronicle of ancient times.

The Bible describes not only prophets and the prophecies,

it also describes daily life of people and the daily foods

and the daily habits that they had.

And here we have in the book of Ruth, is a short story

of a certain Moabite young woman who came

to the land of Judah to Bethlehem.

And here she meets a local Israeli person called the Boaz

who has a big field of wheat.

And then towards lunch, he says, if I may read in Hebrew...

(speaking Hebrew)

What I claim is that this hammad is hummus.

A very nice erotic life story in the spring time

in Bethlehem, where an older man and a younger woman

are having hummus together in the field and the next day

they will be on the threshing floor together.

They will marry later and they will be

the great grandparents of king David.

(smooching sound)

I published it as an article and the title

was a little provocative.

The title was, the hummus is ours.

(instrumentals)

Mia's story spread like wildfire.

It's right in there that Ruth take hummus,

give it to Boaz.

So...

And it was also a pita bread mentioned there.

So it was there before them.

We know that the Bible came before everything, so.

Even before us. Okay?

People responded very strongly.

First there were some right-wingers, Jewish right-wingers

who became my greatest fans.

Usually they hate me because I'm a left-winger in Israel.

Suddenly they found a support in my theory

about the hummus, because for them it's another proof

that this land is ours.

You know, when your ancestors were walking with their sheep

in the desert, we were wiping hummus in Bethlehem like that,

something like this.

(laughs)

So it's become a biblical controversy.

That's just preposterous.

The word hummus is mentioned in the Bible

because it's also a Hebrew word.

And because they mentioned chickpeas.

(upbeat music)

I'm in London to meet writer and doyen

of middle Eastern food, Claudia Roden.

Claudia's books are a rich tapestry of recipes

and history weaving together memories and flavors.

Chickpeas are extremely important and they always were

in ancient Egypt and in what is Palestine and greater Syria,

all the parts where they have chickpeas,

they formed really the most important part of the diet

because people on the holder populations were poor.

The peasantry was poor. It's really peasant dishes.

But I don't think in the Bible, they have a recipe

with tahini and garlic and lemon.

Okay. So chickpeas date back to biblical times.

But what about hummus? The recipe?

It must be much older I would say than the 19th century

or 18th century, I would say.

Perhaps it could be Syria.

Because in Syria, it was one

of the earliest great civilizations.

(instrumentals)

What I do know is the hummus story

is deeply embroiled in war and Conquest.

(upbeat music)

For 400 years, the Ottoman empire ruled a large slice

of the middle east from its Turkish Capital Constantinople.

The modern nation states with their hummus conflict,

are only recent inventions, Lebanon in 1943,

Syria and Jordan in 1946 and Israel, 1948.

(upbeat music)

Hummus is middle Eastern Arabic famous dish.

But I believe that nowhere in the Arab world whose enjoys

such status as it does in Israel.

I think it became really, really popular

after the six-days war

when people started traveling to the west bank

and to Eastern Jerusalem, there were

some legendary hummus places.

And it's a very Israeli thing to go out for hummus

and the simpler it is, the shabbier it is, the better

or the more authentic it is perceived.

It's no longer just a food in the Jewish state.

Hummus is a national religion.

(singing in a foreign language)

Since 1958 food companies have promoted and sold hummus

as Israel's national dish.

It's now a multi-million checkoff business.

Supermarkets are awash with hummus products.

(audience clapping)

Even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu

is trumpeting the global success of Israeli hummus

to the pro Israel lobby in Washington.

In the last decade, Israeli companies have invested

more than $50 billion in the United States.

(audience clapping and cheering)

So one of those companies, it's a company that is building

a food factory.

Now here's what it means.

More business, more jobs, and yes, more hummus.

(audience clapping and cheering)

I'm starting to realize this isn't just about

who owns or invented hummus.

This fight is about big business.

(upbeat music)

Global big business.

(upbeat music)

In 1995, hummus in the US was a $5 million industry.

Today, sales top 400 million per year.

Americans, it seems to me is hungry for hummus.

(machines clattering)

As US demand for hummus grows, two Israeli companies

now control two-thirds of the market.

Israeli food giant, Strauss bought out Sabra Salads in 2006

and Olsen's took over Tribe in 2008.

Let's start with our classic.

It's always a good place to start.

So you kind of get a feel for how the base product tastes.

Here you go.

Okay.

I'm not a great fan of industrial hummus,

but this tasting was surprisingly good.

These are really, you know, American flavors,

but in a hummus.

And then the toppings are of a cilantro,

or like a chimichurri flavor is now very, very hot.

You see it featured all the time in recipes and

Americans really like cilantros.

So hummus the way it's meant to be,

the way Americans like it.

So people are getting healthy indulgence

when they eat hummus.

Consumers tell us all the time, you know,

they can eat almost a whole tub and they don't feel guilty.

So it's kind of like the perfect food.

(machines chiming)

The market is about $400 million and it's been growing,

double digits the last couple of years,

which has been fantastic.

Tribe right now is the number two national player.

And we're also the only all natural national player.

We really wanna stand for all natural, authentic,

delicious hummus that people really connect with

and it's their go-to hummus.

The global March of Israeli hummus

even extends to my supermarket in far away

Bondi beach, Australia.

Well this one looks nice. It's got chickpeas in it.

It's become a fashionable 21st century food

commodity manufactured and sold everywhere.

All the supermarkets have their own brand off of hummus.

And just to show you how hummus has taken a new life

and become different in this country.

This is the Marks and Spencer ones.

It says herb and onion seed dip.

So it's got, as you can see, herb's, different kinds,

onion seed, and it's got even some bits of tomato.

Who knows? Perhaps it's made by a separate company

by Bangladeshi workforce.

(somber music)

So this is what the hummus war boils down to,

an ancient even perhaps biblical food

squeezed into plastic tubs.

(soft music)

It's a market war.

By claiming the hummus recipe

is Lebanese intellectual property, Fadi Abboud

and his associates want a cut of the kudos

and the lucrative international market.

(bell chimes)

Fadi is a loud voice in the hummus war,

but it's little known outside of Lebanon

that he's also a hummus producer.

His company 1NES he's one of the few in Lebanon,

making fresh hummus in tubs.

(soft music)

But Lebanese fresh food technology compared to that

of its rival Israel, is best described as hand crafted.

(soft music)

We are now working hard to export more hummus

with the proper Lebanese formula, if you like recipe.

Yes, it is the first in the world to be produced

in the traditional platter, which is used for hummus.

The international success of Israeli hummus,

put their us offshoots, Sabra and Tribe on the front line

of the hummus war.

I've come to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love.

It's here, that Jewish and Palestinian activists unite

staging hummus protests against Israel's occupation

of the west bank.

In 2005, after the international court made a ruling

that the separation wall was illegal,

Palestinian organization called on

the international community to engage

in boycott divestment and sanctions against Israel.

So we wanted to do a campaign that would be something

that would connect the dots between people's ordinary lives

and the situation in Palestine.

So it was kind of a no brainer after we did our research,

Sabra and Tribe were brands that are sold locally.

Apparently they taste good. So people buy them.

We entered the store. We acted as if we were shopping.

There was a particular call, and then people just started

to come out.

Feel free.

(singing and dancing)

The flash dance, the people that worked

on the flash dance,

at the time I had actually never seen a YouTube.

I didn't really know what people were saying.

They were wanting to create this thing

and it would go viral.

(singing and dancing)

To be honest, we've seen very little impact

to our business from the boycott at all,

on the consumer side, on the business side.

So that's probably the easiest way to answer that question.

It's not had a large impact on us.

The profits from these sales support

the illegal occupation and human rights abuses

created by the government of Israel

against the Palestinian people.

(soft music)

The hummus war for me has raised some big questions.

Despite their troubled history and animosity,

people on both sides of this fight are essentially the same.

(soft music)

Family and food are at the center of their lives.

And yes, hummus.

Call me crazy. Call me naive.

But if hummus is a food of love,

could it be the food of peace?

(lively music)

You know one day, inshallah, God willing,

it will become the food of peace.

We're gonna have huge hummus festival and then one day

we'll know for sure who makes the best hummus.

And may the best hummus win.

This is the culture of the Jews. And also of the Arab.

They eat together.

When you eat with someone, it's like lions.

When they eat together, they are a group.

If you don't eat together, they are fighting.

And when they eat together everybody smile.

There's no problem. There's no borders.

We say that our vision of peace

is having hummus in Damascus.

They will be eating hummus in Damascus

and we will be dancing in Tel Aviv.

(laughs)

Because I don't think cuisine is their strong point,

so I picked on dancing.

Bring him, this Lebanese that wants my name.

Tell him to come with pleasure.

(speaking foreign language)

(upbeat music)

Peace, love and hummus.

(upbeat music)

And the love life of the Bondi hummus tragic,

has a happy ever after ending too.

A Portuguese rose, who loves her hummus.

(child crying)

(upbeat music)

Yeah, its great.

(upbeat music)

So my conclusion to the question,

who owns hummus is, I do.

(upbeat music)

And so does everyone else who makes, eats and enjoys it.

Bon Appétit.

(lively music)