Wednesday 21 July 2010

Cooking Their Way to Recognition



This particularly heart-warming story caught my attention this afternoon. It is the story of one Palestinian man's outrage at Israel calling mosakhen an Israeli dish when it's origins are Palestinian.

In order to reclaim the dish though this restaurant owner went the extra mile and cooked the biggest ever mosakhen seen to get into the Guinness World Records.

The thing which I find particularly inspiring is that Nasser Abdulhadi (the chef in question) spent a year demanding that the people at Guinness list his achievement as one from Palestine rather than the Occupied Territories. He goes on to say: "We need recognition as a regular people, for what we can achieve in the normal run of life. We're not just a resistance movement fighting the Occupation."

When discussing this conflict it is so easy to remember that there are people living in the area just getting on with their lives. Nevertheless, until the international community can realistically point to a free Palestinian state not subjected to Israeli de facto control the fight must continue.

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