Cultural dispossession “Virgin Atlantic caused an outcry in late 2017 with a new inflight menu that included ‘Palestinian couscous salad’. This was in fact maftoul, a popular traditional dish in the Middle East. An indignant passenger posted a photo on Twitter, accusing the airline of being ‘terrorist sympathisers’. Retweeted by pro-Israeli organisations, the image went viral, some furious social media users even claiming it was a ‘Jewish’ or ‘Israeli’ salad. Virgin apologised for causing offence and removed references to Palestine from the menu. Emirati economy airline Flydubai, which launched direct flights to Israel after relations between the countries were normalised in 2020, took care not to make the same mistake. Its online ‘Israel travel guide’ describes hummus, falafel, shakshuka and msabbha as Israeli dishes, though they are traditional in Palestine and across the Levant. Unlike Virgin, Flydubai disregarded the criticism this drew from Palestinians and other Arabs. These a
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51