#its for immigration purposes
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earl-grey-love · 1 year ago
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Ugh... I have to go to London this week and I'd really rather do anything else. But alas, I must suck it up for the sake of love.
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artemisbarnowl · 1 year ago
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I'm oversimplifying and generalising but another white immigrant privilege I enjoy is that any white person who's family's been there for yonks means their ancestors were some kind of asshole. Violent criminal. Pilgrim. Came during the whites only policy for money and more racism. This is applicable to most colonised countries. My parents got here on a boat because half their fucking country collapsed in a war what's your excuse?
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bitchthefuck1 · 2 years ago
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🔥disney
I feel like at this point both hating and loving Disney are pretty popular opinions, so I guess the only thing I can say is that I don't get the whole deal with Disney world as like thee American childhood experience? Idk if it's just an "I'm first gen and grew up in an immigrant community" thing but the idea that you would go to Disney world as a family (or ever) was like. not even an inkling of a thought. I honestly don't even see the appeal really, like there are way cheaper ways to get on a rollercoaster, and none of the Disney films were particularly formative to my childhood, so I don't even get why people would want to meet adults dressed as them if you're older than like 5. It's wild to me that this is a real thing real human beings do and that it's considered normal or common. This isn't like a shaming people thing, I just really don't get it.
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reel-fear · 2 years ago
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I think you guys are losing it with the Earthspark critiques now actually like at first I was on board but now it feels like u guys have forgotten we've only got one season so far and 99% of what we have seen was clearly set up for later pay off like calm down a little-
#if u replace these words with other words this is fucked up#and someone replies#ramblez#I joined in on it for a sec to talk abt how I personally view the themes#but now going in the tags is kinda a minefield suddenly all from one blog#and its like guys this series JUST started#not to mention a lot of the takes just feel. In really bad faith or purposely reading too deep into minimal stuff rn#like sure maybe the cybertronians are supposed to be symbolism for immigrants and stuff but I think they could also just be#symbolism of poc or other races in general? Considering what they've expeirence isnt purely xenophobia but other forms of racism too#and we dont exactly have enough info to know how the cons are gonna be treated what route the villains go down etc etc#ngl some of the takes feel like that tweet where some guy was like yea did u just figure out changing words in a sentence changes its meanin#the same is for stories#we dont yet entirely know what the terrans symbolize in all of this#what they are going to do with the cons the villains and everyone else#so yeah if u decide that certain characters n such symbolize something different than the intention [which we dont know yet#] u can make a story fucked up and problematic but thats not good critique thats how u make X character is secretly dead and this is#the afterlife theories abt pokemon and shit-#u cant just be like 'if you take this character and read them as symbolic of a thing thats never really mentioned or suggest by the story#then their story is actually very fucked up' and not provide more elaboration-#reminds me the tfa transphobia post that was like 'tfa clearly shows modifying ur body to be evil and dehumanizing#in terms of the characters upgrading' AND LIKE DID U EVEN WATCH THE SHOW OPTIMUS UPGRADES HIMSELF TO#TAKE DOWN MEGATRON... YOU KNOW... THE VILLAIN#LIKE YEA IF U TAKE THESE CHARACTERS NOT CODED TO BE TRANS AT ALL AND SAY THEY R SYMBOLISM FOR TRANS PPL#U MIGHT SEE THE STORY AS FUCKED UP BUT ITS NOT THE STORIES FAULT UR SCRATCHING OUT WORDS AND REPLACING#THEM WITH OTHERS-#reminds me of the nightheart shit too#nightheart isnt coded to be trans hating nightheart isnt transphobia its common sense#and yea if u take him as symbolism for being trans suddenly every woman in TC is transphobic now but thats not the storys fault#thats yours for putting concepts in the story and projecting ideas onto it that it does not hint at nor care to explore
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mantisgodsdomain · 2 years ago
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Winning a prize personally by being someone's "well, this trope isn't usually my style, but i know this author is Really Good at writing so i'll check it out anyways" author
#we speak#if you are the person we're talking about here: points at u. <3<3<3#at some point we will post works that are slightly more fluffy#but unfortunately you will have to deal with the fact that we fucking love morally dubious idiots and we also fucking love Situations#at all times we are looking between our works where bad things happen and our works where its just a passive Emotion Swirl#and then picking Bad Things Happen bc we think its fun#eventually we will get around to fluffier stuff we're just allergic to not swirling in a few bonus emotions#we are sorry but we have tried! we cannot write straight fluff. we need smth extra to make it interesting#otherwise our brain simply Does Not latch on#we salute the brave fluff makers out there for being capable of creating straight up fluff its not generally our style and we dont know#how to make it#is it really a tender moment if u do not get there through daring ur friend to eat u while still like 50% sure u might die#perhaps with a tiny bit of the impulsive want of “if im going to risk death then its gonna be at the claws of someone i love”#we think not. also bc something something love we find the need to note our vi is Very Aro. this is due to The Aro Anxiety#us writing anything about love: but what if they think its... ROMANTIC??? oh gods the horrors the horrors#that said we do not think team snakemouths relationship fits into any relationship definition#and if we ever write a relationship chart for whatever reason their dynamic will be listed as “team snakemouth”#right next to mothiva and zasps “in love and incapable of not being weird abt it” and levi and celias “married (immigration purposes)"#they sure are team snakemouth. people look at them and go “thats team snakemouth all right”.#you could ask thirty different people and get thirty different answers as to their relationship and they would all be wrong#anyways. we've derailed somewhat. we are part of the *checks*#...77.1% of the whump community that is aspec and we like to do funky fresh pain things#alas it is one of the many things that must be tolerated about us and our writing. however if u follow us ur probably fine#we are most obnoxious on our tumblr blog where u have to choose to enter bc we are secure in the knowledge that u can leave at any time#we dont need to tone ourself down here! theres a bunch of buttons u can use to choose our volume for urself! its fucking great!#gods we love being obnoxious on the internet it is SO much fun. more people should do this#its also fun to post things abt fics that we may not finish for months at a time. we love to do that#we will get around to all of our works eventually but the wait will be Long. in the meantime u get to see us talking abt how cool we are
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molluskzone · 11 months ago
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im thinking of changing isaacs last name, it IS used as a surname however im afraid that because it is also a first name that it will be confusing...
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transgaysex · 1 year ago
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i know i would be a vastly different person if i didnt have to deal with hyper-empathy. i know i probably have things that i benefit from by being too empathetic. but its very hard not to wonder how happier i would be if i just didnt have to deal with that.
#wind howls#google search when do i stop caring about my parents happiness and start working towards my own ?#that just seems like such a mild example but i cannot overstate how deeply the thought is poisoning me.#i. dont necessarily envy having no empathy. some of my very dearly beloved homies have little empathy and-#i know how that can cause trouble for them ! i do not envy that. i just wish i could care about things a normal amount.#i also wish that like. hyper empathy was seen just a tad more seriously. i get that theres clowns out there who claim to be empaths and#whatever other bullshit they tried to pull off either for jokester purposes or to scam people. like i get that#its just so unfun when its on a clinical level. it feels like i am being haunted by everyone around me.#when do i start caring about what i feel ? when do i start caring about my own happiness ? maybe thats part of why im suffocating so much#god i need to move out. its going to cause me so much pain to move out. its going to hurt and relieve my parents when i move out.#theyre going to be so proud of me. theyre going to be devastated. its hard enough knowing that us immigrating here caused-#my maternal grandpa to develop diabetes from how heartbroken he was. i am so afraid to cause them pain. i know theyre not happy here.#what am i supposed to do ? when do i start living my life for myself ? is it when i move out ? is it when my parents pass ? i#dont even want to think about that. the paranoia from that already makes me feel ill on a good day.#i dont know how to remedy to myself. i feel sick and sad. i would like to know what it feels like to live for just myself alone someday#wurgh.#until then. i have editing class and drawing class tomorrow. ill try to focus on that for now.
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zincbot · 1 year ago
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i think the spontaneous airbenders are so interesting
#lok#like ok#i know the show focuses on bending cause it's sick and cool (and it is)#but there's more to each culture than just their bending (though of course the cultural importance of bending can not be denied)#so there's this really interesting dichotomy where these people suddenly gain this culturally significant trait#from a culture and nation that's been all but wiped out#and suddenly there's this pressure to learn about this unfamiliar history and rebuild a slain people#but all the new airbender recruits. they're all earth kingdom#though they were from ba sing se which is unique in it's status as being 'unaffected' by the war#(and of course by unaffected i mean the war gave the ruling power of ba sing se an excuse to assert absolute power over its citizens)#creating perhaps the starkest rich and poor imbalance of all cities across the nations#so obviously their feelings towards their home culture would be mixed already#but there's more to being earth kingdom than the treatment from the dai li. like their families and food and things like that#i know they couldn't have gone back to their homes because of the safety concern. but it's crazy to have your life uprooted and implanted#into a culture you're expected to make anew.#i guess it's a really unique way to be an immigrant#i'd have liked to see more airbenders from the fire nation and water tribes but i know the last few seasons of korra were heavily focused on#the troubles arising in a post-war earth kingdom#because. for all intents and purposes. the earth kingdom won the war.#it must be assumed that the fire nation was made to pay repairations towards the earth kingdom and water tribes. especially because of#how much the southern tribe was able to be rebuilt (zuko seems very familiar with tonraq who seemed to be the defacto southern leader before#before they officially took independance from the north#and so despite the creation of republic city on what was originally colonized earth kingdom land#the earth kingdom is doing very wall after the war#we didn't get to see much of the fire nation at all in korra and i'm sad because i'm so interested in what a post-war fire nation is like.#we know that they turned their military resources freely out to republic city as the 'united republic'#but other than that it's pretty sparse information#and i say the earth kingdom is doing well but i mostly mean financially#which doesn't help the people especially with the weath imbalance#the scars of war are on every nation. and the earth kingdom isn't any better off for winning
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ravenkings · 2 days ago
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Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.
Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.
You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.
In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.
It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.
–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"
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earl-grey-love · 1 year ago
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I was outfit planning for when I had to go get my fingerprints scanned, and I was gonna pick my GTA fan t-shirt before I realized that might not be a good idea.
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scourgebrother · 2 years ago
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really busy these couple of days but after all of this would pass i'd like to be a bit salty about the language expectations in europe if i may
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woolydemon · 2 years ago
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I need to get to the tgaa games bc the main thing stopping myself from following ppl is bc i don't want to spoil myself abt those games yet 😭😭😭
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wszczebrzyszynie · 1 year ago
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If you don't mind me asking, what did Pearl do to rack up those specific crimes in your science fiction au?
oh to be completly honest i just put crimes that sound most interesting on her wanted poster. She did a lot of things durning her career and many of them she doesnt elaborate on. but most importantly shes a former earthian terrorist, which is the case for a lot of earthian criminals and ex criminals in the story (namely Pearl, Grian and Martyn). This is one of the reasons why her bounty is higher than Tangos at first, considering that nowdays shes more interested in robberies; shes been in the buisness for so long she doesnt even remember her track record herself
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being born and raised on earth comes with a lot of baggage. Most of it is destroyed, by wars and catastrophes and simply time, and there is significantly less people than in space combined. Earth, in the eyes of many, outlived its purpose in letting humanity spread around the universe, and therefore isnt really... needed, anymore. theres more work put into easying the immigration process from earth to space, than there is in actually making the planet livable again, and not just a piece of history to be studied. For earthians, it means living in poor conditions and general poverty, with the only solution proposed and encouraged being to leave the planet. In terms of social life, the most notable thing is that earthians tend to stick together; on earth it means the closest social circle, like the village, town, street, while in space it means earthians as a whole, since its not that hard to spot one among spacians. They tend to be protective over themselves and in space there is this general idea of earthian loyalty to each other, as they arent regarded extremely well in spacian circles. (unrelated to Pearl, but this "earthian trust" is something Martyn uses a lot for his benefit, something Grian and Bigb dont trust fully, but Jimmy does). that closeness is why despite everything Pearl still checks up on Jimmy and Grian when she can. Even if they arent related by blood (i imagine Pearl and Grian to be cousins that were raised like siblings, while Jimmy is completly unrelated to them), they were raised like family, and treat each other as such
its no real surprise that a both Pearl and Grian went into crime; they knew how to steal since they were little, and the general disdain for spacians is something they lived with for just as long. the most surprising thing really is just how good of a criminal Pearl turned out to be
(the reason why acts of terrorism isnt mentioned on her poster: not everything is 100% planned out which is why im sometimes very vague about things and the designs change from one drawing to another. it just wasnt something i planned her to be, but it fits with hers, Martyns and Ethos backstories, so here it is)
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apas-95 · 1 year ago
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Is there a story behind China's one child policy that makes it not as horrifying as western media claims?
The defining feature of China's development for the past 70 years has been the urban-rural divide. In order to develop a semi-feudal country with a very low industrial level into an industrialised, socialist nation, it was necessary to develop industrial centres. To 'organically' develop industrial centres would have taken many decades, if not centuries of continued impoverishment and starvation, so programs were put in place to accelerate the development of industry by preferentially supporting cities.
Programs like the 'urban-rural price scissors' placed price controls on agricultural products, which made food affordable for city-dwellers, at the direct expense of reducing the income of rural, agricultural areas. This hits on the heart of the issue - to preferentially develop industrial centres in order to support the rest of the country, the rest of the country must first take up the burden of supporting those centres. Either some get out of poverty *first*, or nobody gets out of poverty at all. The result being: a divide between urban and rural areas in their quality of life and prospects. In order to keep this system from falling apart, several other policies were needed to support it, such as the Hukou system, which controlled immigration within the country. The Hukou system differentiated between rural and urban residents, and restricted immigration to urban areas - because, given the urban-rural divide, everyone would rather just try to move to the cities, leaving the agricultural industry to collapse. The Hukou system (alongside being a piece in many other problems, like the 'one country two systems', etc) prevented this, and prevented the entire thing from collapsing. The 'one child policy' was another system supporting this mode of development. It applied principally to city-dwellers, to prevent the populations of cities expanding beyond the limited size the agricultural regions could support, and generally had no 'punishments' greater than a lack of government child-support, or even a fine, for those who still wanted additional children. Ethnic minorities, and rural residents, were granted additional children, with rural ethnic minorities getting double. It wasn't something anyone would love, but it served an important purpose.
I use the past-tense, here, because these systems have either already been phased out or are in the process of being phased out. The method of urban-rural price scissors as a method of development ran its course, and, ultimately, was exhausted - the negative aspects, of its underdevelopment of rural regions, began to overwhelm its positive aspects. So, it was replaced with the paradigm of 'Reform and Opening Up' around the 1980s. Urban-rural price scissors were removed (leading to protests by urban workers and intellectuals in the late '80s), and the Hukou system, along with the 'one child policy', were and are being slowly eased out as lessening inequality between the urban and rural areas make them unnecessary. Under the new system, the driver of development was no longer at the expense of rural regions, but was carried out through the internal market and external capital. The development paradigm of Reform and Opening Up worked to resolved some contradictions, in the form of the urban-rural divide, and created some of its own, in the form of internal wealth divisions within the cities. Through it, over 800 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty - almost all of them being in rural areas - and extreme poverty was completely abolished within China. 'Extreme poverty' can be a difficult thing for westerners to grasp, wherein poverty means not paying rent on time, but to illustrate - many of the last holdout regions of extreme poverty were originally guerrilla base areas, impassable regions of mountainside which were long hikes away from schools or hospitals, wherein entire villages were living in conditions not dissimilar to their feudal state a century before. These villages were, when possible, given infrastructure and a meaningful local industry accounting their environment and tradition (like growing a certain type of mountainous fruit), or entirely relocated to free government-built housing lower down the mountain that was theirs to own. These were the people the 'one child policy' was aiding, by reducing the urban population they had to support. Again, there were exemptions for rural and ethnic minority populations to the policy.
Even now, Reform and Opening Up is running its course. Its own negative aspects, such as urban wealth inequality, are beginning to overcome its positive aspects. So, the new paradigm is 'Common Prosperity', which will work to resolve the past system's contradictions, and surely introduce its own contradictions in the form of chafing against the national bourgeoisie, as it increases state control and ownership of industry, and furthers a reintroduced collectivisation. Organising a nation of well over a billion people is not simple. It is not done based on soundbytes and on picking apart policies in the abstract for how 'dystopian' they sound. It is an exceedingly complex and interconnected process based on a dialectical, material analysis of things; not a utopian, idealist one. What matters is this: those 800,000,000 people now freed from absolute poverty. The things necessary to achieve that were, unquestionably, good things - because they achieved that. They had their negative aspects, as does everything that exists, but they were unquestionably correct and progressive things.
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preposterousjams · 15 days ago
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My opinion on the Latino Jason Todd headcanon
While I do understand ppl's criticism of the latino Jason todd headcanon and how its kind of racist to make the kid with parents with drug problems as the latino one, to me its more of a reclamation BECAUSE of DC's racism.
Read any 80s/90s batman issue that covers gang violence and drugs, most if not ALL of the criminals are poc; black people and latinos visibly make up the majority in the poorer neighbourhoods in Gotham. Aside from the caricaturist way they r drawn/speak, its not THAT weird cause its a reflection of irl big cities where immigrants and marginalised ppl are often forced to live in such situations, (like most of my dominican family lives in the bronx... it aint racist to say dominicans tend to flock there), BUT...the weird part is when the second a sympathetic character comes from that area, he's white and has a name thats "too fancy for the streets".
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Obviously, Jason was created to look like the old robin, so I can't say that the whole "diamond in the rough" situation was purposely a tad bit racist, but its still a lil weird (especially with bruce's comment).
If Jason were a part of the overwhelming demographic in his area, the good-kid-in-a-bad-area trope has less connotations. DC is currently trying to fix this trope is by making crime alley whiter, which isn't bad but they could've just yk... humanised the non-white residents.
I also feel like the messed up way Jason was treated post-death is what makes him so relatable to latino readers. His tragic story of dying while trying to save his only living relative is turned into a lesson for newer vigilantes. Jason's particular disdain for abusers on a few occasions was twisted (by both writers and characters) into him always being dumb, reckless, cocky, angry and disobedient, always violent, never having been able to get over his upbringing. None of those things were true (he was a normal level of reckless and cocky like every other robin, not more), but its an easier narrative to digest compared to how it was in reality; a kid who worked so hard and loved even harder, died to save a woman who couldn't care less about his existence. He was an emotional AND smart kid who wanted so bad to help others get better but was remembered as too emotional (in a bad way).
THIS is the reality for many latino diasporas in day to day life; Theres no question that Latino culture is passionate and emotive, but people from other cultures assume that it is followed by instead of logical. both can coexist. emotion does not mean u have no logic. Emotions can be irrational but they aren't inherently that way, and I wouldn't say that the moments where Jason lashed out as a teenager were irrational (in og runs, not rewrites post red hood), they were mostly done to protect someone (going crazy on abusers, disobeying batman to save sheila, that time he got into a fight at school to defend his friend).
A lot of euro-centric culture is OBSESSED with the idea that rationality is separate from feelings and emotions, but not crying at a funeral doesn't mean you're better than those who do. Emotions are the basis of human ethics and morals, they define the way we interact as a collective and ignoring them does not mean they are not there. Theres no winner to a contest of who can feel the less. And the way Jason's emotions are treated (pre-rh, hes definitely unhinged afterwards lol) is so in line with how white culture tends to punish those who aren't ashamed to feel.
I TOTES UNDERSTAND that some ppl who headcanon Jason as latino are doing it for the complete opposite of reasons, like "oh here some angry emotional guy with druggie parents, haha must be latino". Its weird. I dont like it. And its only brought up so he can swear in spanish in some rlly bad text post where his emotions are getting out. But to me there's so much potential for metanarrative and commentary on how latinos are treated in media that can be exemplified through the way his character is treated. Being latino would add SO MUCH DEPTH to his character and his dynamic with the others.
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najia-cooks · 11 months ago
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[ID: First image shows large falafel balls, one pulled apart to show that it is bright green and red on the inside, on a plate alongside green chilis, parsley, and pickled turnips. Second image is an extreme close-up of the inside of a halved falafel ball drizzled with tahina sauce. End ID]
فلافل محشي فلسطيني / Falafel muhashshi falastini (Palestinian stuffed falafel)
Falafel (فَلَافِل) is of contested origin. Various hypotheses hold that it was invented in Egypt any time between the era of the Pharoahs and the late nineteenth century (when the first written references to it appear). In Egypt, it is known as طَعْمِيَّة (ṭa'miyya)—the diminutive of طَعَام "piece of food"—and is made with fava beans. It was probably in Palestine that the dish first came to be made entirely with chickpeas.
The etymology of the word "falafel" is also contested. It is perhaps from the plural of an earlier Arabic word *filfal, from Aramaic 𐡐𐡋𐡐𐡉𐡋 "pilpāl," "small round thing, peppercorn"; or from "مفلفل" "mfelfel," a word meaning "peppered," from "فلفل" "pepper" + participle prefix مُ "mu."
This recipe is for deep-fried chickpea falafel with an onion and sumac حَشْوَة (ḥashua), or filling; falafel are also sometimes stuffed with labna. The spice-, aromatic-, and herb-heavy batter includes additions common to Palestinian recipes—such as dill seeds and green onions—and produces falafel balls with moist, tender interiors and crisp exteriors. The sumac-onion filling is tart and smooth, and the nutty, rich, and bright tahina-based sauce lightens the dish and provides a play of textures.
Falafel with a filling is falafel مُحَشّي (muḥashshi or maḥshshi), from حَشَّى‎ (ḥashshā) "to stuff, to fill." While plain falafel may be eaten alongside sauces, vegetables, and pickles as a meal or a snack, or eaten in flatbread wraps or kmaj bread, stuffed falafel are usually made larger and eaten on their own, not in a wrap or sandwich.
Falafel has gone through varying processes of adoption, recognition, nationalization, claiming, and re-patriation in Zionist settlers' writing. A general arc may be traced from adoption during the Mandate years, to nationalization and claiming in the years following the Nakba until the end of the 20th century, and back to re-Arabization in the 21st. However, settlers disagree with each other about the value and qualities of the dish within any given period.
What is consistent is that falafel maintains a strategic ambiguity: particular qualities thought to belong to "Arabs" may be assigned, revoked, rearranged, and reassigned to it (and to other foodstuffs and cultural products) at will, in accordance with broader trends in politics, economics, and culture, or in service of the particular argument that a settler (or foreign Zionist) wishes to make.
Mandate Palestine, 1920s – early '30s: Secular and collective
While most scholars hold that claims of an ancient origin for falafel are unfounded, it was certainly being eaten in Palestine by the 1920s. Yael Raviv writes that Jewish settlers of the second and third "עליות"‎ ("aliyot," waves of immigration; singular "עליה" "aliya") tended to adopt falafel, and other Palestinian foodstuffs, largely uncritically. They viewed Palestinian Arabs as holding vessels that had preserved Biblical culture unchanged, and that could therefore serve as models for a "new," agriculturally rooted, physically active, masculine Jewry that would leave behind the supposed errors of "old" European Jewishness, including its culinary traditions—though of course the Arab diet would need to be "corrected" and "civilized" before it was wholly suitable for this purpose.
Falafel was further endeared to these "חֲלוּצִים‎" ("halutzim," "pioneers") by its status as a street food. The undesirable "old" European Jewishness was associated with the insularity of the nuclear family and the bourgeois laziness of indoor living. The קִבּוּצים‎ ("Kibbutzim," communal living centers), though they represented only a small minority of settlers, furnished a constrasting ideal of modern, earthy Jewishness: they left food production to non-resident professional cooks, eliding the role of the private, domestic kitchen. Falafel slotted in well with these ascetic ideals: like the archetypal Arabic bread and olive oil eaten by the Jewish farmer in his field, it was hardy, cheap, quick, portable, and unconnected to the indoor kitchen.
The author of a 1929 article in דאר היום ("Doar Hyom," "Today's Mail") shows unrestrained admiration for the "[]מזרחי" ("Oriental") food, writing of his purchase of falafel stuffed in a "פיתה" ("pita") that:
רק בני-ערב, ואחיהם — היהודים הספרדים — רק הם עלולים "להכנת מטעם מפולפל" שכזה, הנעים כל כך לחיך [...].
("Only the Arabs, and their brothers—the Sepherdi Jews—only they are likely to create a delicacy so 'peppered' [a play on the פ-ל-פ-ל (f-l-f-l) word root], one so pleasing to the palate".)
Falafel's strong association with "Arabs" (i.e., Palestinians), however, did blemish the foodstuff in the eyes of some as early as 1930. An article in the English-language Palestine Bulletin told the story of Kamel Ibn Hassan's trial for the murder of a British soldier, lingering on the "Arab" "hashish addicts," "women of the streets," and "concessionaires" who rounded out this lurid glimpse into the "underground life lived by a certain section of Arab Haifa"; it was in this context that Kamel's "'business' of falafel" (scare quotes original) was mentioned.
Mandate Palestine, late 1930s–40s: A popular Oriental dish
In 1933, only three licensed falafel vendors operated in Tel Aviv; but by December 1939, Lilian Cornfeld (columnist for the English-language Palestine Post) could lament that "filafel cakes" were "proclaiming their odoriferous presence from every street corner," no longer "restricted to the seashore and Oriental sections" of the city.
Settlers' attitudes to falafel at this time continued to range from appreciation to fascinated disgust to ambivalence, and references continued to focus on its cheapness and quickness. According to Cornfeld, though the "orgy of summertime eating" of which falafel was the "most popular" representative caused some dietary "damage" to children, and though the "rather messy and dubious looking" food was deep-fried, the chickpeas themselves were still of "great nutritional value": "However much we may object to frying, — if fry you must, this at least is the proper way of doing it."
Cornfeld's article, appearing 10 years after the 1929 reference to falafel in pita quoted above, further specifies how this dish was constructed:
There is first half a pita (Arab loaf), slit open and filled with five filafels, a few fried chips [i.e. French fries] and sometimes even a little salad. The whole is smeared over with Tehina, a local mayonnaise made with sesame oil (emphasis original).
The ethnicity of these early vendors is not explicitly mentioned in these accounts. The Zionist "תוצרת הארץ" "totzeret ha’aretz"; "produce of the land") campaign in the 1930s and 1940s recommended buying only Jewish produce and using only Jewish labor, but it did not achieve unilaterial success, so it is not assured that settlers would not be buying from Palestinian vendors. There were, however, also Mizrahi Jewish vendors in Tel Aviv at this time.
The WW2-era "צֶנַע" ("tzena"; "frugality") period of rationing meat, which was enforced by British mandatory authorities beginning in 1939 and persisting until 1959, may also have contributed to the popularity of falafel during this time—though urban settlers employed various strategies to maintain access to significant amounts of meat.
Israel and elsewhere, 1950s – early 60s: The dawn of de-Arabization
After the Nakba (the ethnic cleansing of broad swathes of Palestine in the creation of the modern state of "Israel"), the task of producing a national Israeli identity and culture tied to the land, and of asserting that Palestinians had no like sense of national identity, acquired new urgency. The claiming of falafel as "the national snack of Israel," the decoupling of the dish from any association with "Arabs" (in settlers' writing of any time period, this means "Palestinians"), and the insistence on associating it with "Israel" and with "Jews," mark this time period in Israeli and U.S.-ian newspaper articles, travelogues, and cookbooks.
During this period, falafel remained popular despite the "reintegrat[ion]" of the nuclear family into the "national project," and the attendant increase in cooking within the familial home. It was still admirably quick, efficient, hardy, and frequently eaten outside. When it was homemade, the dish could be used rhetorically to marry older ideas about embodying a "new" Jewishness and a return to the land through dietary habits, with the recent return to the home kitchen. In 1952, Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, the wife of the second President of Israel, wrote to a South African Zionist women's society:
I prefer Oriental dishes and am inclined towards vegetarianism and naturalism, since we are returning to our homeland, going back to our origin, to our climate, our landscape and it is only natural that we liberate ourselves from many of the habits we acquired in the course of our wanderings in many countries, different from our own. [...] Meals at the President's table [...] consist mainly of various kinds of vegetable prepared in the Oriental manner which we like as well as [...] home-made Falafel, and, of course vegetables and fruits of the season.
Out of doors, associations of falafel with low prices, with profusion and excess, and with youth, travelling and vacation (especially to urban locales and the seaside) continue. Falafel as part and parcel of Israeli locales is given new emphasis: a reference to the pervasive smell of frying falafel rounds out the description of a chaotic, crowded, clamorous scene in the compact, winding streets of any old city. Falafel increasingly stands metonymically for Israel, especially in articles written to entice Jewish tourists and settlers: no one is held to have visited Israel unless they have tried real Israeli falafel. A 1958 song ("ולנו יש פלאפל", "And We Have Falafel") avers that:
הַיּוֹם הוּא רַק יוֹרֵד מִן הַמָּטוֹס [...] כְבָר קוֹנֶה פָלָאפֶל וְשׁוֹתֶה גָּזוֹז כִּי זֶה הַמַּאֲכָל הַלְּאֻמִּי שֶׁל יִשְׂרָאֵל
("Today when [a Jew] gets off the plane [to Israel] he immediately has a falafel and drinks gazoz [...] because this is the national dish of Israel"). A 1962 story in Israel Today features a boy visiting Israel responding to the question "Have you learned Hebrew yet?" by asserting "I know what falafel is." Recipes for falafel appear alongside ads for smoked lox and gefilte fish in U.S.-ian Jewish magazines; falafel was served by Zionist student groups in U.S.-ian universities beginning in the 1950s and continuing to now.
These de-Arabization and nationalization processes were possible in part because it was often Mizrahim (West Asian and North African Jews) who introduced Israelis to Palestinian food—especially after 1950, when they began to immigrate to Israel in larger numbers. Even if unfamiliar with specific Palestinian dishes, Mizrahim were at least familiar with many of the ingredients, taste profiles, and cooking methods involved in preparing them. They were also more willing to maintain their familiar foodways as settlers than were Zionist Ashkenazim, who often wanted to distance themselves from European and diaspora Jewish culture.
Despite their longstanding segregation from Israeli Ashkenazim (and the desire of Ashkenazim to create a "new" European Judaism separate from the indolence and ignorance of "Oriental" Jews, including their wayward foodways), Mizrahim were still preferable to Palestinian Arabs as a point of origin for Israel's "national snack." When associated with Mizrahi vendors, falafel could be considered both Oriental and Jewish (note that Sephardim and Mizrahim are unilaterally not considered to be "Arabs" in this writing).
Thus food writing of the 1950s and 60s (and some food writing today) asserts, contrary to settlers' writing of the 1920s and 30s, that falafel had been introduced to Israel by Jewish immigrants from Syria, Yemen, or Morocco, who had been used to eating it in their native countries—this, despite the fact that Yemen and Morocco did not at this time have falafel dishes. Even texts critical of Zionism echoed this narrative. In fact, however, Yemeni vendors had learned to make falafel in Egypt on their way to Palestine and Israel, and probably found falafel already being sold and eaten there when they arrived.Meneley, Anne2007 Like an Extra Virgin. American Anthropologist 109(4):678–687
Meanwhile, "pita" (Palestinian Arabic: خبز الكماج; khubbiz al-kmaj) was undergoing in some quarters a similar process of Israelization; it remained "Arab" in others. In 1956, a Boston-born settler in Haifa wrote for The Jewish Post:
The baking of the pittah loaves is still an Arab monopoly [in Israel], and the food is not available at groceries or bakeries which serve Jewish clientele exclusively. For our Oriental meal to be a success we must have pittah, so the more advance shopping must be done.
This "Arab monopoly" in fact did not extent to an Arab monopoly in discourse: it was a mere four years later that the National Jewish Post and Opinion described "Peeta" as an "Israeli thin bread." Two years after that, the U.S.-published My Jewish Kitchen: The Momales Ta'am Cookbook (co-authored by Zionist writer Shushannah Spector) defined "pitta" as an "Israeli roll."
Despite all this scrubbing work, settlers' attitudes towards falafel in the late 1950s were not wholly positive, and references to the dish as having been "appropriated from the [Palestinian] Arabs" did not disappear. A 1958 article, written by a Boston-born man who had settled in Israel in 1948 and published in U.S.-ian Zionist magazine Midstream, repeats the usual associations of falafel with the "younger set" of visitors from kibbutzim to "urban" locales; it also denigrates it as a “formidably indigestible Arab delicacy concocted from highly spiced legumes rolled into little balls, fried in grease, and then inserted into an underbaked piece of dough, known as a pita.”
Thus settlers were ambivalent about khubbiz as well. If their food writing sometimes refers to pita as "doughy" or "underbaked," it is perhaps because they were purchasing it from stores rather than baking it at home—bakeries sometimes underbake their khubbiz so that it retains more water, since it is sold by weight.
Israel and elsewhere, late 1960s–2010s: Falafel with even fewer Arabs
The sanitization of falafel would be more complete in the 60s and 70s, as falafel was gradually moved out of separate "Oriental dishes" categories and into the main sections of Israeli cookbooks. A widespread return to כַּשְׁרוּת‎ (kashrut; dietary laws) meant that falafel, a פַּרְוֶה (parve) dish—one that contained no meat or dairy—was a convenient addition on occasions when food intersected with nationalist institutions, such as at state dinners and in the mess halls of Israeli military forces.
This, however, still did not prohibit Israelis from displaying ambivalence towards the food. Falafel was more likely to be glorified as a symbol of Jewish Israel in foreign magazines and tourist guides, including in the U.S.A. and Italy, than it was to be praised in Israeli Zionist publications.
Where falafel did maintain an association with Palestinians, it was to assert that their versions of it had been inferior. In 1969, Israeli writer Ruth Bondy opines:
Experience says that if we are to form an affection for a people we should find something admirable about its customs and folklore, its food or girls, its poetry and music. True, we have taken the first steps in this direction [with Palestinians]: we like kebab, hummous, tehina and falafel. The trouble is that these have already become Jewish dishes and are prepared more tastily by every Rumanian restaurateur than by the natives of Nablus.
Opinions about falafel in this case seem to serve as a mirror for political opinions about Palestinians: the same writer had asserted, on the previous page, that the "ideal situation, of course, would be to keep all the territories we are holding today—but without so many Arabs. A few Arabs would even be desirable, for reasons of local color, raising pigs for non-Moslems and serving bread on the Passover, but not in their masses" (trans. Israel L. Taslitt).
Later narratives tended to retrench the Israelization of falafel, often acknowledging that falafel had existed in Palestine prior to Zionist incursion, but holding that Jewish settlers had made significant changes to its preparation that were ultimately responsible for making it into a worldwide favorite. Joan Nathan's 2001 Foods of Israel Today, for example, claimed that, while fava and chickpea falafel had both preëxisted the British Mandate period, Mizrahi settlers caused chickpeas to be the only pulse used in falafel.
Gil Marks, who had echoed this narrative in his 2010 Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, later attributed the success of Palestinian foods to settlers' inventiveness: "Jews didn’t invent falafel. They didn’t invent hummus. They didn’t invent pita. But what they did invent was the sandwich. Putting it all together. And somehow that took off and now I have three hummus restaurants near my house on the Upper West Side.”
Israel and elsewhere, 2000s – 2020s: Re-Arabization; or, "Local color"
Ronald Ranta has identified a trend of "re-Arabizing" Palestinian food in Israeli discourse of the late 2000s and later: cooks, authors, and brands acknowledge a food's origin or identity as "Arab," or occasionally even "Palestinian," and consumers assert that Palestinian and Israeli-Palestinian (i.e., Israeli citizens of Palestinian ancestry) preparations of foods are superior to, or more "authentic" than, Jewish-Israeli ones. Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian brands and restaurants market various foods, including falafel, as "אסלי" ("asli"), from the Arabic "أَصْلِيّ" ("ʔaṣliyy"; "original"), or "בלדי" ("baladi"), from the Arabic "بَلَدِيّ" ("baladiyy"; "native" or "my land").
This dedication to multiculturalism may seem like progress, but Ranta cautions that it can also be analyzed as a new strategy in a consistent pattern of marginalization of the indigenous population: "the Arab-Palestinian other is r­e-colonized and re-imagined only as a resource for tasty food [...] which has been de-politicized[;] whatever is useful and tasty is consumed, adapted and appropriated, while the rest of its culture is marginalized and discarded." This is the "serving bread" and "local color" described by Bondy: "Arabs" are thought of in terms of their usefulness to settlers, and not as equal political participants in the nation. For Ranta, the "re-Arabizing" of Palestinian food thus marks a new era in Israel's "confiden[ce]" in its dominance over the indigenous population.
So this repatriation of Palestinian food is limited insofar as it does not extend to an acknowledgement of Palestinians' political aspirations, or a rejection of the Zionist state. Food, like other indicators and aspects of culture, is a "safe" avenue for engagement with colonized populations even when politics is not.
The acknowledgement of Palestinian identity as an attempt to neutralize political dissent, or perhaps to resolve the contradictions inherent in liberal Zionist identity, can also be seen in scholarship about Israeli food culture. This scholarship tends to focus on narratives about food in the cultural domain, ignoring the material impacts of the settler-colonialist state's control over the production and distribution of food (something that Ranta does as well). Food is said to "cross[] borders" and "transcend[] cultural barriers" without examination of who put the borders there (or where, or why, or how, or when). Disinterest in material realities is cultivated so that anodyne narratives about food as “a bridge” between divides can be pursued.
Raviv, for example, acknowledges that falafel's de-Palestinianization was inspired by anti-Arab sentiment, and that claiming falafel in support of "Jewish nationalism" was a result of "a connection between the people and a common land and history [needing] to be created artificially"; however, after referring euphemistically to the "accelerated" circumstances of Israel's creation, she supports a shared identity for falafel in which it can also be recognized as "Israeli." She concludes that this should not pose a problem for Palestinians, since "falafel was never produced through the labor of a colonized population, nor was Palestinian land appropriated for the purpose of growing chickpeas for its preparation. Thus, falafel is not a tool of oppression."
Palestine and Israel, 1960s – 2020s: Material realities
Yet chickpeas have been grown in Israel for decades, all of them necessarily on appropriated Palestinian land. Experimentation with planting in the arid conditions of the south continues, with the result that today, chickpea is the major pulse crop in the country. An estimated 17,670,000 kilograms of chickpeas were produced in Israel in 2021; at that time, this figure had increased by an average of 3.5% each year since 1966. 73,110 kilograms of that 2021 crop was exported (this even after several years of consecutive decline in chickpea exports following a peak in 2018), representing $945,000 in exports of dried chickpeas alone.
The majority of these chickpeas ($872,000) were exported to the West Bank and Gaza; Palestinians' inability to control their own imports (all of which must pass through Israeli customs, and which are heavily taxed or else completely denied entry), and Israeli settler violence and government expropriation of land, water, and electricity resources (which make agriculture difficult), mean that Palestine functions as a captive market for Israeli exports. Israeli goods are the only ones that enter Palestinian markets freely.
By contrast, Palestinian exports, as well as imports, are subject to taxation by Israel, and only a small minority of imports to Israel come from Palestine ($1.13 million out of $22.4 million of dried chickpeas in 2021).
The 1967 occupation of the West Bank has besides had a demonstrable impact on Palestinians' ability to grow chickpeas for domestic consumption or export in the first place, as data on the changing uses of agricultural land in the area from 1966–2001 allow us to see. Chickpeas, along with wheat, barley, fenugreek, and dura, made up a major part of farmers' crops from 1840 to 1914; but by 2001, the combined area devoted to these field crops was only a third of its 1966 value. The total area given over to chickpeas, lentils and vetch, in particular, shrank from 14,380 hectares in 1966 to 3,950 hectares in 1983.
Part of this decrease in production was due to a shortage of agricultural labor, as Palestinians, newly deprived of land or of the necessary water, capital, and resources to work it—and in defiance of Raviv's assertion that "falafel was never produced through the labor of a colonized population"—sought jobs as day laborers on Israeli fields.
The dearth of water was perhaps especially limiting. Palestinians may not build anything without a permit, which the Israeli military may deny for any, or for no, reason: no Palestinian's request for a permit to dig a well has been approved in the West Bank since 1967. Israel drains aquifiers for its own use and forbids Palestinians to gather rainwater, which the Israeli military claims to own. This lack of water led to land which had previously been used to grow other crops being transitioned into olive tree fields, which do not require as much water or labor to tend.
In Gaza as well, occupation systematically denies Palestinians of food itself, not just narratives about food. The majority of the population in Gaza is food-insecure, as Israel allows only precisely determined (and scant) amounts of food to cross its borders. Gazans rely largely on canned goods, such as chickpeas (often purchased at subsidized rates through food aid programs run by international NGOs), because they do not require scarce water or fuel to prepare—but canned chickpeas cannot be used to prepare a typical deep-fried falafel recipe (the discs would fall apart while frying). There is, besides, a continual shortage of oil (of which only a pre-determined amount of calories are allowed to enter the Strip). Any narrative about Israeli food culture that does not take these and other realities of settler-colonialism into account is less than half complete.
Of course, falafel is far from the only food impacted by this long campaign of starvation, and the strategy is only intensifying: as of December 2023, children are reported to have died by starvation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
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Equipment:
A meat grinder, or a food processor, or a high-speed or immersion blender, or a mortar and pestle and an enormous store of patience
A pot, for frying
A kitchen thermometer (optional)
Ingredients:
Makes 12 large falafel balls; serves 4 (if eaten on their own).
For the فلافل (falafel):
500g dried chickpeas (1010g once soaked)
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp cumin seeds
1 Tbsp coriander seeds
2 tsp dill seeds (عين جرادة; optional)
1 medium green chili pepper (such as a jalapeño), or 1/2 large one (such as a ram's horn / فلفل قرن الغزال)
2 stalks green onion (3 if the stalks are thin) (optional)
Large bunch (50g) parsley, stems on; or half parsley and half cilantro
2 Tbsp sea salt
2 tsp baking soda (optional)
For the حَشوة (filling):
2 large yellow onions, diced
1/4 cup coarsely ground sumac
4 tsp shatta (شطة: red chili paste), optional
Salt, to taste
3 Tbsp olive oil
For the طراطور (tarator):
3 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp table salt
1/4 cup white tahina
Juice of half a lemon (2 Tbsp)
2 Tbsp vegan yoghurt (لبن رائب; optional)
About 1/4 cup water
To make cultured vegan yoghurt, follow my labna recipe with 1 cup, instead of 3/4 cup, of water; skip the straining step.
To fry:
Several cups neutral oil
Untoasted hulled sesame seeds (optional)
Instructions:
1. If using whole spices, lightly toast in a dry skillet over medium heat, then grind with a mortar and pestle or spice mill.
2. Grind chickpeas, onion, garlic, chili, and herbs. Modern Palestinian recipes tend to use powered meat grinders; you could also use a food processor, speed blender, or immersion blender. Some recipes set aside some of the chickpeas, aromatics, and herbs and mince them finely, passing the knife over them several times, then mixing them in with the ground mixture to give the final product some texture. Consult your own preferences.
To mimic the stone-ground texture of traditional falafel, I used a mortar and pestle. I found this to produce a tender, creamy, moist texture on the inside, with the expected crunchy exterior. It took me about two hours to grind a half-batch of this recipe this way, so I don't per se recommend it, but know that it is possible if you don't have any powered tools.
3. Mix in salt, spices, and baking soda and stir thoroughly to combine. Allow to chill in the fridge while you prepare the filling and sauce.
If you do not plan to fry all of the batter right away, only add baking soda to the portion that you will fry immediately. Refrigerate the rest of the batter for up to 2 days, or freeze it for up to 2 months. Add and incorporate baking soda immediately before frying. Frozen batter will need to be thawed before shaping and frying.
For the filling:
1. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Fry onion and a pinch of salt for several minutes, until translucent. Remove from heat.
2. Add sumac and stir to combine. Add shatta, if desired, and stir.
For the tarator:
1. Grind garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle (if you don't have one, finely mince and then crush the garlic with the flat of your knife).
2. Add garlic to a bowl along with tahina and whisk. You will notice the mixture growing smoother and thicker as the garlic works as an emulsifier.
3. Gradually add lemon juice and continue whisking until smooth. Add yoghurt, if desired, and whisk again.
4. Add water slowly while whisking until desired consistency is achieved. Taste and adjust salt.
To fry:
1. Heat several inches of oil in a small or medium pot to about 350 °F (175 °C). A piece of batter dropped in the oil should float and immediately form bubbles, but should not sizzle violently. (With a small pot on my gas stove, my heat was at medium-low).
2. Use your hands or a large falafel mold to shape the falafel.
To use a falafel mold: Dip your mold into water. If you choose to cover both sides of the falafel with sesame seeds, first sprinkle sesame seeds into the mold; then apply a flat layer of batter. Add a spoonful of filling into the center, and then cover it with a heaping mound of batter. Using a spoon, scrape from the center to the edge of the mold repeatedly, while rotating the mold, to shape the falafel into a disc with a slightly rounded top. Sprinkle the top with sesame seeds.
To use your hands: wet your hands slightly and take up a small handful of batter. Shape it into a slightly flattened sphere in your palm and form an indentation in the center; fill the indentation with filling. Cover it with more batter, then gently squeeze between both hands to shape. Sprinkle with sesame seeds as desired.
3. Use a slotted spoon or kitchen spider to lower falafel balls into the oil as they are formed. Fry, flipping as necessary, until discs are a uniform brown (keep in mind that they will darken another shade once removed from the oil). Remove onto a wire rack or paper towel.
If the pot you are using is inclined to stick, be sure to scrape the bottom and agitate each falafel disc a couple seconds after dropping it in.
4. Repeat until you run out of batter. Occasionally use a slotted spoon or small sieve to remove any excess sesame seeds from the oil so they do not burn and become acrid.
Serve immediately with sauce, sliced vegetables, and pickles, as desired.
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