Wars are not only fought on the battlefield. There are small gestures with which one can contribute, without knowing it, to a war conflict. For example, buying dates.
The Palestinian writer and historian Salah Jamal explained it yesterday in a new and very interesting quote from La Cuina Oberta, that space of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) directed by the artist and activist Marina Monsonís in which, in addition to recipes, concerns are brewing. “When the Israelites occupied the richest area of ??Palestine, the Jordan River, they also took over the palm trees and the land. The European Union banned the marketing of dates from occupied areas. But it is a great fallacy, because Israel knows how camouflage their dates to sell them on the market.
One of the strategies that, according to Jamal, is most used to whiten Israeli dates is to change the name on the boxes, translating it into Arabic or labeling it as coming from the Holy Land or as a product of Jordan. In this way they avoid putting Israel on the label. “Many times a fee is also paid to small producers in Palestine to pass off Israeli dates as Palestinian and thus avoid the boycott.”
Gustavo Duch, a Food Sovereignty activist, warned yesterday at Macba that the Israeli State has lost more than 600 million euros in the last 3 years due to the boycott of dates in solidarity with the Palestinian people. “What is happening in Palestine is similar to what is happening in many countries that are still developing, such as Colombia with the avocado. It is a continuous invasion by capitalist growth.”
War industry and agriculture have always gone hand in hand. We already saw it with pesticides in the Vietnam War or with fertilizers from the military industry. “The best way to help is by defending local products, foods from each territory.”
Also memory, Duch pointed out. A memory that Israel takes from Palestine. “The Zionists have made hummus known throughout the globe as if it were an Israeli recipe. It is not true. It has been eaten in the Middle East for more than 2,000 years,” Jamal explained yesterday.
The same thing happens with za’atar, that Arabic spice mixture that was given a few years ago to the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, at the gates of the Jerusalem wall under the anthem that it was the Israeli national product. “For Palestinians, za’atar was always the food of resistance because it was found in the mountains. Mountains that Israel decided to raze.”
The number of victims from Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip continues to increase and this Thursday reached at least 30,035 dead and 70,457 injured, reported the Ministry of Health of the enclave, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.
However, these figures do not include the at least 104 dead and 700 injured, according to the same health authorities, caused by an Israeli attack yesterday Thursday morning against Gazans who were crowding in the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the main city. in the north of the territory and where half a million inhabitants are at risk of suffering from famine, because UN aid trucks barely arrive due to military obstructions, according to the United Nations and other NGOs.
