Month: April 2015

The Falafel War


egyptian eating brekfast

The Falafel War

In my last flight to Paris, I was fortunate of sitting next to a young man who seemed cautious; with an excessive head turning motion. He seems like he is waiting for something to come or to happen. We avoided each other for a few thousand miles until I started playing an Arab movie on my laptop. It is dangerous behavior nowadays especially on airplanes. I was told not to bring anything hard or ethnic on the plane. I stopped ordering the special meal made for Muslim “hellal meal” with no pork. I will even eat pork if I have to.

 

The young man introduced himself as “I’m from Israel and we love to listen to Arabic music there.”  We both started talking and we agreed on lots of things; and in the most part we kept politics out, you could say, we weren’t in our usual combative argumentative mood. Yes, the Jews had a rotten deal in history and they deserved a break. The Palestinians happened to be the victims of that break, and most Arabs would agree that: the Israelis are there and they need to live together with the Palestinians in peace side by side as long as they don’t take or bomb the Arab side.

 

We talked about families, living in the US and football (soccer;) and we started talking about food, “my favorite food is the Jewish Falafel” he swaggered. This is the first time that I heard of food having faith. As an Arab who grew up in Egypt, I have been eating falafel all my life, believing that falafel is just a Mediterranean food.  Through history the Zionist founder fathers, knew it early on, to acquire the land of Palestine, you need also to appropriate its cultural; by claiming its food, music, and arts. All I’m saying is that Falafel is a regional food: Mediterranean food, made by the people who live there. Like Pizza is an Italian food not a Catholic food, Ooze is a Greek drink and not an Orthodoxy drink. So if you were an Arab Jew or a Jew who happened to live in the Mediterranean area along with Arabs and you made or ate Falafel; it is still a Mediterranean food, an ethnic food not a religious food. The problem I have nowadays with some fundamentalists Jews that they vehemently think that everything a Jew does, hears, or says is inherently Jewish. So if a few Jews had lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, now it is the promise land for millions of Jews around the world, mostly European Jews. Muslims around the world don’t claim Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad as their promise land.  We all know now what happened when some Muslims claim an Islamic state, the whole world is bombing the shit out of them even Muslims themselves.

 

Now, my defensive reflexive mechanism is gearing up. Hey, here is the deal my Israeli friend; I don’t care if you claim Palestinian land, water, or even olive trees: but you can’t claim my beloved falafel. Welcome to the falafel war. Everyone in the Middle East claims an authentic purity in their Falafel. Now the Israelis got into the falafel fray and as Min Liao’s stated in his piece Middle East Crisis, “Jews say that ancient Jews ate falafel in Egypt and Syria; and tourist brochures proclaim falafel to be “Israel’s national snack”. Arabs feel as if an important cultural recipe has been stolen and bastardized, and insist on falafel’s romantic Arab “roots”.

falafel

Even now, McDonalds is making falafel its own and is offering McFalafel in Egypt. Egyptians however will add a twist to Falafel, they call it Taamiah and make it with fava beans pronounced “foul”; and not from Garbanzo Beans (Chickpeas) as all other Arabs will make falafel. Food reflects the cultural and the values of the people making it and eating it. Falafel is the most democratic food in Egypt; it is eaten daily by all the Egyptians cutting through the rich and poor, young and old, women and men, Sisi supporters along with Brotherhood’s. I still believe, if there is any hope to put Egypt back together, Egyptians need to start a falafel conversation.  Falafel breaks through all socio-economic classes, and for most Egyptians falafel along with foul, is the most reliable meal of the day; falafel shields Egyptians from the harsh daily life, or from any culinary assault like the one on that flight to Paris.  Falafel is how Egyptians start their day. It is mostly eaten at breakfast where you can see people congregated around small street food cart enjoying communal meals in a harmony in the mist of street chaos and noises.

 

Falafel is a ethnic food, eaten mostly at breakfast where people want to start their day with familiar food. An Egyptian breakfast is typically a combination of Falafel, or Fava beans, feta cheese, and some kind of green, tomatoes, fresh onions, or cucumber; unlike the American breakfast, an Egyptian breakfast is a peaceful meal; where you don’t have to kill for bacon, or crack eggs to get your omelet.   

 

My fellow Jews let my falafel go”

 

Ahmed Tharwat

Host/Producer of Arab American TV show Bel Ahdan with Ahmed

He Blogs at Notes from America WWW.ahmediatv.com

His articles appeared in national and international publications

You can follow him on

www.faceBook.com/ahmediatv , www.Twitter.com/ahmediatv

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The World is Run by “Generals”

American flag log

Harry S. Truman once said, “The ‘C’ students run the world.” That was a long time ago, and now the world is run by “Generals”–still “C” Students- -in two different camps. The first camp is usually run by military generals like Saddam, Gad
dafi, Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Ziad, Al-Sisi, Mugabe, Barre, Al-Bashir, Idi Amin, and the list goes on. The other camp is run by a different kind of general, corporate generals, like General Motors, General Electric, General Food, General Mills, General Dynamic, General Union, and the list goes one.
Where are the similarities and differences between these two camps of generals? The military generals usually run undemocratic oppressive regimes, and they enforce their will on people’s lives through guns and security measures. However, the corporate generals run more democratic systems, and they enforce their will and control over their people’s lives and institutions thorough money and influence. The military generals specialize in their undemocratic style and lack of political freedom, and they don’t respect human rights or the rule of law. Because corporate generals don’t have this luxury, they control people by different means. They control people’s minds, and take the political process to the market place creating a culture of consumerism where citizens become consumers and the political freedom moves from the ballot box to the shopping malls. Military generals may rig elections to stay in power, but corporate generals rig the election process and electorate’s minds.
Brendan Geoffrey reported in Forbes magazine “There may be 147 companies in the world that own everything…. But it’s not you and I who really control those companies, even though much of our money is in them. Given the nature of how money is invested, there are four companies in the shadows that really control those companies that own everything.”
Today, corporations have become the dominant institution of business and impact practically everything on this planet from people, animals and plants to the quality and availability of water, food, energy and resources (e.g., fossil fuels, timber, metals, gems, chemicals) to transportation, housing, media, education, communications and the shaping our socio-economic-political system, which was shown when the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations.
Mark Chasan, CEO of AWE Global, wrote in the Huffington Post
“Prior to the 17th century, the first corporations were created as not-for-profit entities to build institutions, such as hospitals and universities, for the public good. They had constitutions detailing their duties overseen by the government. Straying outside the constitutional boundaries was punishable by law.”
For example, the world’s first commercial corporation was the East India Company, set up by merchants to get spices from India. The East Indian Company expanded into a vast enterprise, conquering India with a total monopoly on trade and all the territorial powers of a government. At its height, it ruled over a fifth of the world’s population with a private army of a quarter million.
Nothing has changed that much, here in America, where we have our military industry complex, with a $555 billon dollar budget, which spent mostly on Corporate generals.
Here is Mark Chasan again, on how our institutors are rigged to provide corporate generals the support and the legal “A substantial amount of today’s regulatory environment is couched in public interest, but provides great economic benefits to large corporations that can afford the lobbying and sponsorship, while often causing significant damage to the public, entrepreneurs, small business and innovation. For example, a study by the Sunlight Foundation, which used tax data to correlate corporate investment in lobbying with decreases in taxes, found that between 2007 and 2009, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, GE, AT&T, Altria, Amgen, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing invested approximately $540 million into lobbying which resulted in aggregate tax reductions of approximately $11 billion.
Similarly, Wall Street analysts predict Apple could earn up to $45.6 billion in its current fiscal year, but could manage to avoid paying billions of dollars in tax.
“We need red blood cells to live, the same way a business needs profits to live, but the purpose of life is not to make red blood cells, the same way the purpose of business is not to exist to make profits.” – R. Edward Freeman, author of Strategic Management
Now corporations run the government and make the laws. The corporate generals’ camp will develop their own institutions, jihadists, in their own way, who would produce the cultural and legal framework in which they operate and flourish.
Consumerism controls the average American, who is exposed to 20,000 marketing messages a day, 7,000 of them advertisements alone. From the moment we wake up to the moment we go back to bed, corporate generals tell us what to eat, drink, wear, what to think, and what is beautiful and what is fun. Consumerism fills our culture and consumer values replace our human values. The average American spends just 15 minutes a week on politics and six hour a day watching TV. Women spend an average of 17 years of their lives trying to lose weight following one weight loss trend after the other.
At the end of the day, we may have the freedom to select between 300 different kinds of water or beer, but we only have two parties to choose from, one is the Republican Party and the other is the Republican “Light” party, which both are in all actuality controlled by corporate “Generals.”

Ahmed Tharwat
Host/Producer of Arab American TV show Bel Ahdan with Ahmed
Blog at
Notes from America WWW.ahmediatv.com
His articles appeared in national and international publications
You can follow him on fBook, Twitter, and YouTube/ahmediatv

Sincerely yours

Ahmed Tharwat
Freelancer/ Foreign Press Fixer/ Public Speaker
Host BelAhdan.. with Ahmed …
a show with an accent for those without one,
airs on Public TV Mondays 10:30pm, Ch. 202

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NOTES FROM AMERICA: THE FLAG

Notes from America: The flag

By Ahmed Tharwat

The American flag consists of 13 horizontal stripes, seven red alternating with six white. The stripes represent the original 13 colonies and the stars represent the 50 states of the Union. It has three colours; red symbolises hardiness and valour, white symbolises purity and innocence, and blue represents vigilance, perseverance and justice. As you travel around the country or walk down the street in your neighbourhood; you see the ominous American flag waving everywhere, including on restaurants, businesses, boats, bikes, underwear, cars and in people’s own private spaces. Wal-Mart recorded the biggest sale of American flags this year.

The American flag has not just become a part of the American patriotic landscape, but also a perennial part of their front yard landscape. Americans show their patriotism through flag posting and seem to show their affection to their flag regardless of their political or religious affiliation; and this was even before the 9/11 tragedy. The American flag will rise and the national anthem is sung before every national or local sporting event, even between two high school teams in the same town with the same nationality.

The American flag has become a symbol of the national identity as Americans; it is becoming the patriotic polygraph test and is now becoming the Republican Party mascot. This sense of flagrant public patriotism is absent in the Arab and Muslim world. Growing up in Egypt, flags fervour is replaced by leader fervour – Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, and now Al-Sisi – their pictures are posted everywhere, on every building, street, public or business office, square, and now even on chocolate, cheese, clothes and jewellery.

The perennial president’s face, with his confident look staring at us wherever we go – you can still see it on all the cover pages of the mainstream media (whether governmental or privately owned), thereby providing us with our daily patriotic fix. The only places devoid of this presidential invasion are Egyptians’ private homes and mosques; these Egyptians own private spaces where the presidents’ pictures are replaced by verses of the Quran, or a family picture.  Do you get the picture?

This goes on in all Arab countries, and with all Arab leaders, as evidence of national insecurity. The president is acting as a father figure; a symbol of our identity, he is the head of our tribe. A friend of mine told me that before Syria had been destroyed, the picture of President Assad was so prominent that he grew up having never seen a picture of a bird or any form of art. Pictures of human faces are not encouraged in Islam, so only our leaders can break this religious taboo with such unbridled fervour. Americans experienced this phenomenon firsthand when they invaded Iraq and experienced Saddam Hussein’s pictures, with his dominant moustache posted everywhere. When the Iraqis felt secure enough, these pictures were the first to be attacked and torn down by the Iraq people – no longer to be seen.

Arab leaders may own the public spaces, they may own the power and governments, media, banks, courts, police and authorities; and they can impose their will on anything and everywhere. Private spaces, however, remain sovereign and out of their firm grip, and while those leaders may own the public conversation, they can never touch the private conversation or people’s faith.

In the Arab world, freedom of expression is a private affair; where the Arab leaders get their real pictures and private names. President Mubarak was the “laughing cow” (La Vache qui Rit), President Gaddafi was the “lunatic”, King Abdullah was the “royal idiot”, Saddam was the “Butcher of Baghdad”; Nasser was the looter, Sadat was the “drug addict”, interim president Adly was the “idiot”, first civilian elected president Morsi was the “spare tire”, and now Al-Sisi has earned a nickname that took this private conversation to another level of vulgarity, the “Pimp”.

Flags don’t mean much to most Arabs – the flag represented the past and serves as a symbol of disgrace and disappointment in their leaders and nationalism. Flags waving in dictatorial systems take a different meaning. You don’t wave the national flag when you protest against your state; you burn it. Lately, and for the most part, we only saw Al-Sisi supporters, remnants of old dictators and paid thugs who wave the flags in Tahrir Square.

The interrogators at Guantanamo Bay may have desecrated the Islamic holy book to force a confession; however, they would never have considered desecrating a national flag. That would have never worked. On the other hand, when Arabs are protesting against Americans they burn the American flag, and not the constitution or even the Bible for that matter. For Americans, and in a consumer culture, the flag remains the larger symbol of unity and an overzealous belief that we are all Americans, at least under the flag, regardless of our race, religion or socioeconomic status. Even in a land of moral relativism, where nothing is sacred, where most of what we use is disposable; the American flag stands tall everywhere, and unlike the Quran, it is illegal to treat it with anything but absolute respect.

Someone once said: “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross.”  In Egypt, it came wrapped in the picture of dictator waving a gun.

Ahmed Tharwat is host and producer of the Arab-American TV show Belahdan (with open Arms), a weekly talk show that airs on MN Public TV. He blogs at Notes From America www.ahmediatv.com. Follow him at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube: ahmediatv

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