November 25, 2014

AFTER A death threat temporarily closed the Conflict Kitchen on November 8, the take-out eatery/art project reopened on November 12 after an outpouring of support from the community. The Conflict Kitchen came under fire from pro-Israel groups after it began serving Palestinian food on October 6 at its outdoor restaurant, which is located in a public space nestled between Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and a number of cultural institutions.

The restaurant's aim is "to expand the engagement the public has with the culture, politics, and issues at stake within the focus region," according to the Conflict Kitchen's website. "Our current Palestinian version introduces our customers to the food, culture and politics of Palestine. Developed in collaboration with Palestinians in Palestine and Pittsburgh, our food comes packaged in wrappers that include interviews with Palestinians on subjects ranging from culture to politics."

Two days after the death threat forced the Conflict Kitchen to close, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Pittsburgh mobilized more than 200 people from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University and local residents, including some pro-Palestinian residents of the Jewish community in Pittsburgh, to demonstrate in support of the restaurant. Many posted letters of solidarity on the restaurant's storefront.

Conflict Kitchen in Pittsburgh (Brandon Shea)

Since the Conflict Kitchen began featuring food from U.S. conflict zones, it has served cuisine from Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. But it was the decision to serve Palestinian food that has sparked the most controversy since Carnegie Mellon University art professor Jon Rubin and artist Dawn Weleski began the project in 2010.

Much of the criticism has focused on the Conflict Kitchen's food wrappers, which are printed with personal stories of Palestinians, living in Palestine and in the U.S. These personal stories cover a wide variety of cultural and social facets of Palestinian life, such as the importance of olive trees to the region, the institution of marriage and the inner workings of life under Israeli occupation.

The testimonies also speak to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, the threat of Israeli settlements and the dangers of traveling as a Palestinian through their own land. The food wrapper even describes the nonviolent protest movement against Israel's apartheid wall in the West Bank.

We have protests at the wall every Friday in Bil'in. We film them and upload them to YouTube. At one protest, Israeli soldiers aimed tear gas canisters directly at protesters only a few meters away. When they shot our friend Bassim, it made a big hole in his chest and killed him. The canister was made in Western Pennsylvania; you can see that printed on the side.

PRO-ISRAEL CRITICS predictably condemned the Conflict Kitchen's decision to serve Palestinian food wrappers as "biased" and "anti-Israel." Some also insulted the intelligence of the Conflict Kitchen organizers and plain common sense by suggesting that the Conflict Kitchen had stepped outside its purview with its Palestinian cooking.

"Conflict Kitchen's focus on countries in conflict is honorable, but Palestine is not in conflict with the U.S.," said Gregg Roman, director of the Community Relations Council at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. "The restaurant is stirring up conflict for the sake of trying to be relevant."

But as the food wrappers themselves make clear, the U.S. is deeply complicit with Israel's occupation of Palestine--from the use of munitions and teargas made in America to the billions of dollars the U.S. provides to Israel annually. During the last Israeli massacre in Gaza, the United States, voting unanimously in the U.S. Senate, sent Israel a care package worth $576 million dollars in military aid.

According to PressTV:

[T]he United States will provide an additional $225 million to Tel Aviv to improve its Iron Dome anti-missile system. The money would be in addition to the $351 million that's already under discussion for Iron Dome in fiscal 2015. It would bring total funding to $576 million, compared with the $176 million requested by the Pentagon for the year that begins on October 1.

IN FACT, it's the mainstream media's coverage of the Conflict Kitchen and its project that has only covered the debate from one point of view. After publishing numerous articles and letters to the editor criticizing Conflict Kitchen's choice of Palestinian cuisine and literature, the Conflict Kitchen had to use its own website to publicize an interview that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Melissa McCart conducted but did not include in her article profiling the new cuisine.

According to the Conflict Kitchen's website:

Post-Gazette writer Melissa McCart approached Conflict Kitchen with a set of questions which were to be included in this article, published November 6, 2014. Unfortunately, Ms. McCart neglected to include any of Conflict Kitchen's answers. Additionally, we specifically requested that Ms. McCart include the viewpoints of local Palestinians in this article, as well as her initial article on Conflict Kitchen's Palestinian version. In both cases, she interviewed and did not include these very important voices.

The Heinz Endowments, a funder of the Conflict Kitchen's focus on the cuisines of other "enemy countries" and its 2013 move to the University of Pittsburgh campus, also joined the pro-Israel critics. "I want to be especially clear that its current program on Palestine was not funded by the endowments," wrote Grant Oliphant, president of the Heinz Endowments, in the Post-Gazette. "And we would not fund such a program, precisely because it appears to be terribly at odds with the mission of promoting understanding."

While Heinz Endowments has pledged not to withdraw funds from other Conflict Kitchen projects, their official statements in the media demonstrate the pro-Israel slant that characterizes the coverage--especially in contrast to the absence of pro-Palestine voices. Such bias encourages reactionary comments and responses, putting innocent people in the crosshairs of potentially hateful violence.

The struggle for justice in Palestine is continuing to build in Pittsburgh. The Conflict Kitchen's reopening represents a victory for the local Palestine solidarity struggle and was only possible due to the hard work of local activists speaking out against the injustice of U.S. government support for Israel's occupation of Palestine. As Dr. Martin Luther King once said, the United States is "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Justice must therefore begin with Palestinian solidarity and opposition to U.S. aid for occupation and apartheid.