Vegans for Palestine Podcast - Episode 14 - The Za'atar Queen

In this episode, Dalal shares her journey to veganism, deeply rooted in Palestinian culture and her upbringing in a felahi community. Her blog "Vegan on Budget / Za’atar Queen" emerged from a desire to document her plant-based lifestyle while highlighting Palestinian culinary heritage, especially the cultural and political significance of za’atar. She explains how za’atar is not 'a seasoning' but a symbol of identity, resistance, and heritage for Palestinians. Also, Dalal reflects on growing up with fresh, homegrown vegetables and how veganism for her is a continuation of Felahi traditions. She critiques mainstream veganism's consumerist focus and emphasizes the need for Arabic-language vegan resources, leading her to create the podcast What the Bateekh. Through conversations with Arab vegans, she explored how veganism intersects with anti-colonial struggle, memory, and identity. Olive harvesting, za’atar preparation, and food sharing are presented as acts of cultural resilience and resistance to Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid and occupation. For Dalal, veganism in Palestine has emerged as a political and cultural expression of survival, memory, and Palestinian liberation.

Captioned version for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people available here.

Follow What the Bateekh Podcast here

The Palestinian artists featured in this episode include:

Dalal Abu Amneh (Palestinian Singer, Producer and Neuroscientist from Nazareth) - Follow Dalal here  and check out Dalal's website here.

Mariam Tamari (Palestinian-Japanese Soprano currently living in Paris) - Follow Mariam here.  Check out this interview with Mariam here. Also check out Mariam's website here. 

The Vegans for Palestine Podcast Team are so proud of Dalal and Mariam's amazing talent. 

Free Palestine.

Transcript

Episode 14 Transcript

[Music – Dalal Abu Amneh singing]

RAYAN: It’s Rayan and welcome to the Vegans for Palestine podcast. In this episode, I have an exclusive with the Za’atar Queen herself. Most of you probably know Dalal as one of the co-hosts of the Vegans for Palestine podcast. But there's more to the story because in this episode, we get to know the Za’atar Queen herself. We unpack her journey to veganism, the cultural significance of Za’atar to Palestinian cuisine, veganism and felahi life, what it's like to live as a vegan on budget, and how she ultimately became the Za’atar Queen. 

DALAL: Vegan on budget and Za’atar Queen? I think they are the shortest easiest way I think for me to explain who I am and what I how I live as a vegan or what things mean to me. So when I so it all started with the blog itself. when I started the blog on Instagram that I think it was in 2020 when I started the blog, and I was vegan way before. but it came in the way that I wanted to talk about my vegan experiences in an informative educational manner because I wanted to teach my students how to create content on social media and Instagram was the platform that age group you know used the most. So, I did some research, and I was I was trying to settle on the name that really represents my identity as a Palestinian and also intersects with me being a vegan. And I just decided that the thing that I eat the most that I grew up eating the most and my mom makes every season that it's always in the house that the house smells with is za’atar. And Za’atar is not just the as those websites cookbooks portray as the seasoning you dress with you know on some salads or you add as a side dish whatever they create with it. That's not our Za’atar. Our Za’atar is the Palestinian thyme that we grow grew up collecting from mountains and hills across Palestine that are endangered and threatened with colonization and land confiscation. And I recall growing up my dad would take us outside, you know, as a as a hike. Now that people just they now know that these family trips across the country used to call hikes. We didn't know them as a hike. We called them like the family time outside like time away, they used to take us into the surrounding villages, and we would just sit out in the nature and collect time sage and yeah enjoy that time out in nature. Yeah. I recall my mom used to buy like from like the she we used to have like our aunt she used to make za’atar and sell it and share it with family and then my mom throughout the years she learned the recipe how to create her own Za’atar. So za’atar was the item that is always there in the house. To school we would have my mom packing us a Zeit (Olive Oil) and za’atar sandwich with cucumber. that that was the best food in the world. Later on in my life, I came across the variations of the za’atar and olive oil sandwich that people would have it with tomatoes or with lean. But my favourite is always simply a pa bread or my mama's bread that she bakes at home and she would make the Za’atar and she would pack us that with a side of cucumbers and that's all like that is your everyday school sandwich my everyday work sandwich I left I travel outside of Palestine I always take za’atar with me and I always make sure that I buy some pita bread, some cucumbers, and that is the food that I eat and I share with people. And I felt that is that was really that was really something that could really speak of me because it's something that I love. It's something that has a story to be told. And on budget is me as a vegan always facing the question of ‘how do you afford living as a vegan? Oh, it must be really expensive. It must be this and that being a vegan. Oh, and you're vegan in Palestine. Are there vegans in Palestine? Like, how are you guys living there in this meat culture?’ Because that's what the world perceives of Arabs because they love to eat meat or they have the variety of these dishes that are solely cooked with meat, with chicken, and that's it. But there's way more than that. And in short, the yeah, I guess I guess the vegan on budget with the za’atar queen started as a blog, but it it's becoming the way for me to explain to people what you know, what being a vegan, Palestinian vegan, is really about because there is way more than the food that people solely eat. And it's an invite to look at our culture, our traditions, our practices, our history. not just with the food, but also how we how we grow the food, how we the relationship that we have with our land, the relationship we have with our ancestors, because it's celebratory. the way we enjoy our meals, the way we take care of the land, how we plant, how we make the produce and yeah, I think that is in short, the ‘vegan on budget’/ za’atar queen story.

NARRATOR #1: Za’atar is a Palestinian staple including in Gaza and for many displaced Palestinians in the enclave it's become a lifeline but how much do you know about the blend? The sour and salty herb blend includes dried wild thyme that's grown in the mountains of Palestine for centuries, sumac, salt, and sesame seeds. It's typically eaten with bread and olive oil or used in an array of dishes. But for most Palestinians, when you mention Za’atar, مناقيش come to mind. Manish is a pastry known and loved across the Levant and usually eaten for breakfast alongside a sweet cup of tea or even as an afternoon snack. Whether eaten homemade or bought from a bakery, everyone has their own memories of the delicious flatbread. They're made of three agricultural staples of the region: wheat, olive oil, and Za’atar. The herb mix that has become internationally known in recent years can be found on every Palestinian table. You might also recognize it as one of the staples people in Gaza have been eating sparingly over the past few months. We've seen it used to top homemade dough with Palestinians trapped in the enclave making their own مناقيش, then using their makeshift ovens to bake the flatbreads since most bakeries have been out of service after being systematically targeted by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. However, it's actually a criminal offense to forage za’atar, and it has been since the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture labelled it a protected plant in 1977. By forbidding Palestinians from collecting zed in the wild, Israel forces them to purchase it and cuts them off from their agricultural heritage. However, many Palestinians still choose to forage the plant as an act of resistance. So the next time you eat or make manaqeesh, remember that for Palestinians, Za’atar is a symbol of life and defiance. 

DALAL: It started officially in 2017, but before that I started I was a pescatarian and then I was before that I was a vegetarian. I didn't really watch any documentaries. I wasn't really influenced by XY celebrity or persona like on social media. I mean, we weren't really that social media generation yet. I mean, at least myself. But I think it was there was a point in my life where eating animals didn't make any sense to me. And I couldn't explain it. I couldn't I don't I just I just didn't find any reason why people eat meat, why they have to have an animal like a dead animal on the table because that is the food, you know. Interestingly, now I understand how we grew up in a household where I can tell you that 80 85% of the food was really vegan or vegan friendly. my mom, not that she's a nurse, but she is someone who was always careful with the food.  we didn't grow up in a household where we would have even access to junk food. Like having a bag of chips would be like a major thing if you sneak around and put your hands on something like that and your brothers would tell your mom then you did something bad that day because she would teach us that this is not really healthy for you. So from a health perspective, vegan friendly or plant-based food was really the for the most part we would have access to that. Like we would always eat fruits, you know, as snacks. There would always be some nuts on the table like fresh juice because I am a I grew up in a village. We have a farm. my dad and his grandfather and then his ancestors before you would have oranges, mandarins, Lemons, all those citrus trees like all those fruits available like every season. So it was very common that we have access to that freshly pressed juice and freshly picked veggies and greens because we grew that in the land. So I knew what the taste of freshly picked okra or cauliflower or peppers or beans and peas and aubergine/ zucchini like my dad used to grow all of these in the land. And I recall my summer breaks as the time we always spend in the farm helping dad with his work collecting that precious because that's how we that was a way for us to make some money but also provide for the family and also share with other family members because in the village you don't just you're not somebody who solely grows your own veggies and citrus fruits and greens and that is all for yourself and your kids. But that's something unique to our tradition. I'm sure like other Palestinians also have the same thing is we exchange what we have with other families from relatives and then from neighbours and other people around us. So that was a way for us to communicate. That was a way for us to celebrate what we grow, what we collect. and the same also applies to olive oil and olives. and it like now I understand more how this is not just people sharing with each other the food but also people fostering these bonds with each other and with their land because it wasn't merely about ‘oh I have an excess of this’. It wasn't out of excess. It was out of that we have, and we share what we have with you and people would exchange that in return. And also now as like for myself, I understand how that really brought me closer to the land, and it brought me closer to our traditions and to my family. And you know spending summertime in the farm wasn't just about you know just collecting or picking what we grow but also us spending time in our nature in our land where we would watch around us dunams and thousands of dunams of land being confiscated and stolen for the settler colonial project. and us feeling that this is a way for us to prove and being resistant and staying in our country and taking care of our land. Nothing would be more meaningful than that. So yeah, I guess now I understand more and more that being a vegan wasn’t just random for me because when I think of how I grew up and where I am now, it's it makes sense. I mean the villagers, the farmers we are, we don't really at least for my family like the animals were not really present in the kind of farm that we have like we only had a relationship I had a relationship with the land itself with the soil with the trees with the produce that we have. But I know that other families they took care of sheep, cows. they would milk the cows like my grandmother; she used to milk the cows and sell the milk because that was really the source of income for the family. And I understand that. But also the fact that the meat or the chicken it used to be sort of a luxury item that you add to the table. people weren't really that rich and they made enough for themselves and enough to survive. But also when they like it, the more they would have it would go to people around them and they would share them with their own community. And when people would have something festive to celebrate, yes, they would serve some kind of like meat because they grew that chicken or that kind of bird in their own backyard and they fed it, they took care of it, they know where it comes from. So that was kind of the privilege that some people would show as a courtesy or celebration to other people. But it wasn't really that every household would always every day they would eat the meat, they would eat the chicken and that is their food. Like our food comes from the land. Like all the seeds, all the all the veggies, all the greens, we would grow them. We take care of them. We know what we put in that soil, and we know what that food tastes like. And now the things really changed, and people have the meat for every occasion. If you're not serving meat when you're having people over then you're poor versus what I perceive that is poverty. When you fail to have any loss, any salad with greens with freshly collected and freshly baked vegetables from your own farm. That is poverty to me. that the fact that we disconnected, we really separated from the land because people are pursuing a different lifestyle. We're taking care of the land. It's a full-time job now. And also like the fact that occupation got people to the point where they have to work to earn money. Majority of the people now they go to the settlements. I mean before October 7th, 2023, people would just simply go to work in the settlements because they are near like they are closer to them, or they would go to the work market where they would work in certain jobs and that takes the time and the energy and the attention from the farm from the land. and life changed, life is different, but there is, and we will get to talk more about this, but there is a lot that we have been like Palestinians have been really disconnected from the land for different reasons, mainly settler colonialism and how occupation taken over thousands of don land confiscation. There are different factors that really play into why we lost our connection with our lifestyle, our tradition of waking up in the morning, being in the farm like around 4:30 or 5 in the morning and then working until it's early noon and then you go home or you make your meal in the farm and then you continue working. At least that was the kind of tradition that I would have over summer breaks. 

NARRATOR #2: Israel has been trying to erase Palestinian cuisine for decades. And one of the main ways they do that is by restricting access to traditional ingredients. A lot of people on here have already called out the destruction of olive trees, which are the backbone of Palestinian agriculture and also a huge part of their food. And it's estimated that Israel has destroyed at least 800,000 olive trees since 1967. But it goes so much further than that. In 1950, the Israeli government passed a law restricting the herding of black goats, which were the main livestock in Palestine. And they justified this by saying that the goats were destroying forests. But that's just patently false. In fact, the forests need goats to help clear out the underbrush and prevent forest fires. And Israel is now having so many forest fires that they've actually had to reintroduce black goats to the environment. Now, let's talk about Za’atar. You probably know it as a spice mix. It's got sesame seeds and sumac, and it also has this herb, which is also called Za’atar. It's part of the mint family and it's a huge part of Levantine cooking and folk medicine. But in 1977, the Israeli government declared this a protected plant and made it a crime to forge Za’atar. And the same thing happened to akoub, which is a type of thistle that's very common in Palestinian cooking. It was declared protected by a 2005 law that also extended the limits on Za’atar foraging out into the West Bank. And research from 2017 found that in all 40 years that Za’atar foraging had been restricted, the only people ever tried for exceeding the limits have been Palestinian. Criminalizing Za’atar and black goats are classic examples of green colonialism, which is where environmental causes are used to disguise colonial purposes. It's one of the main ways that Israel justifies seizing Palestinian land. And this goes back to the founding of the JNF in 1901. They tout the fact that they planted hundreds of millions of trees, but they planted a lot of them on the ruins of Palestinian villages. And it's an extremely effective tactic because you prevent the expelled people from returning to their homes. You hide the evidence of your destruction, and you look like an environmentalist while you're doing it. 

DALAL: So, what the bateekh is a personal project that I started last year and it's a vegan Arabic speaking podcast that I where I really started unpacking and addressing the intersectionality between veganism and Palestinian advocacy and why it really makes sense that if you're advocating for animal rights, if you're advocating for animal liberation. It should make sense to you that animals in Palestine matter and like humans in Palestine matter and then ultimately the call for a free liberated Palestine should also be on the agenda. So I essentially planned on creating social media content like a series of social media posts and at the same time I had the idea that I wanted to create also a podcast in Arabic about veganism and Palestine and advocacy for Palestine. And during a late 2023 meeting with the Vegans for Palestine board as a board member, I was sharing my ideas and I mentioned that I have this name that I'm intending on creating social media posts and also a podcast, but I hadn't settled on the podcast name yet. And George, our friend and one of the board members, he was saying that like What the Bateekh really sells for a podcast, and it should be the podcast name. And so we all were really excited about it, and I started planning and I started preparing and contacting people to start creating these episodes. And at the same time, I also met Natalia through George, and she really started working with me on the podcast and essentially created the podcast theme music and along the journey she has been really working with me on the production and basically all the episodes that we were creating together. So yeah, essentially that was the idea for what they and I'm so proud of the work that everybody put in for the creation of the episodes and throughout this journey we have been really working together to bring something to bridge that gap in the Arabic speaking community of vegans and to help people understand what veganism is and what it means to vegans. in Arabic for the Arabic speakers in our Arabic speaking communities. What the batik stands for what the watermelon because watermelon but also it comes from this what the heck kind of idea because we are unpacking the and debunking the myths not only about veganism but also about Palestine. And yeah, in in that in the podcast we addressed different topics but solely in Arabic because the language is missing in the conversation amongst vegans. And I think now I try to I think now I really understand that the mainstream vegan veganism is really heavily populated with English speakers and even if you're Arab you speak in English because everybody speaks English and that's the medium of communication but when I found that there is there is a gap there and there is a lot of missing conversation and then understanding when you don't have that information in Arabic. So, the podcast really helped to bridge that gap and share Arabic speaking voices and their perspectives on matters pertaining to their lives, to their advocacy, to their work and also symbol like the daily life experiences especially of the vegans living in Palestine and what being a vegan means to them. And you would be surprised how there is way more stories about history and culture and tradition than what you would find in a mainstream vegan podcast in English.  I mean, I don't know about other languages, but I speak English, and I hear the things that are narrated and spoken of in in these podcasts. And it's interesting that people perceive veganism as a trend or a matter of consumption because it's only about products and alternatives and substitutes. But then when you speak to a vegan from Palestine or a vegan living in Syria or in Lebanon, you they would tell you about the tradition of the food, how they grew up eating lots of things, the kind of struggles they encountered and how that all ties into veganism somehow. So yeah, the batik is our also invite for people to really think of the missing narrative in mainstream veganism. And I can say that I really learned a lot even about myself from the people that I talked to. I managed to have a diversity from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco. With that diversity came a lot of stories and interesting reasons why people go vegan. And I feel really humbled and privileged by that. And also when I look at the vegan on budget, I think it's when I when you get to speak to people and they share their experiences, you realize how things are really that simple. They're really on budget. It doesn't really take much to not just moneywise but also like effort and it takes it really takes an understanding of your identity. It's quite revolutionizing because being a vegan and living in Palestine there is way more diversity and really interesting stories that people will share with you. We could have different experiences but we are intersecting in different ways because we share culture and we understand that making the za’atar for instance every mother they would pride themselves with a secret ingredient or the how much you would toast the sesame seeds before you add them or everybody would have a specific like a special touch to what they create. But also, we all would share how our mothers and grandmothers for instance in the case of Za’atar they would all bride themselves with a secret ingredient or a special way a unique way to put things together. But then understanding the long process where people forge the Za’atar from different areas. the Za’atar from like Qalqilya is not the same other parts would have it would have a distinct flavour to it from the Za’atar you would have in Ramla or in like elsewhere in Palestine and understanding that long process of foraging and then drying and then mixing things together like that's an entire tradition on its own there. So, being a Palestinian in in living in Palestine and being vegan as well, it's it helped me understand more and connect more with my roots and understand that I could have access to diversity of products that are mainstream and heavily processed if you consider things from a health perspective. But then I choose not to, and I refuse to subscribe to that culture of consumerism. And that is also part of like why I live on budget because I believe that I am rich when I look at my pantry and I find that I have chickpeas the dried you know seeds of and loss of chickpeas red and brown lentils or I would have these fixed items in my pantry. I'm really rich because I can really create anything with it. I can make different dishes. like and you would have food like you create your own food and being able to create food and because you understand how you cook things and because you also understand where that food comes from. There is a lot of history there. So through my online journey of posting content about you know Za’atar Queen and the vegan on budget I got to connect with Palestinian vegans because I think when I started the blog, I didn't really have any vegan friends in Palestine from Palestine, and I really wanted to like I was really curious like I wanted to meet other vegans. So I recall when I started like researching online, I came across events under the title of vegan nights in Palestine and they were organized by now my dear friends ‘vegan in Palestine’ and also Baladi and they would put these gatherings where they serve Palestinian food that is really vegan. And I remember how we used to get together and talk about our lives and our food and like I recall these nights that like sadly we don't have like anymore because of the current events. but in these gatherings, would talk about our experiences, our lives, our food and it's very familiar like everything really looks familiar to what my mom would cook and or what my grandmother used to cook. So, it's familiar food and but then the gathering itself it was it was beyond a vegan night to me because when you travel outside of like when I would travel outside of Palestine, vegan events are solely the vegan the vegan dishes or the veganized dishes actually of like you would have jackfruit in a burger or you would have the veganized version of a Mexican or an Italian food and that's all to it. But when you sit together with vegans, Palestinian vegans, you talk about your lives under occupation, you talk about your career, your family, your friendships, your everything. But at these vegan events, I was realizing how my Palestinian identity and my commitment to veganism are deeply interconnected. For me, total liberation means a free Palestine from the river to the sea while also dismantling decades of colonial systems that have trapped us in capitalism and consumerism. And yeah, surprisingly it's all somehow it goes back to being a vegan.  so yeah, it's a celebration of friendship. It's a celebration of communication, a celebration of tradition and culture. And I really missed that. And I really hope that Palestine will be free and soon we will go back to our vegan nights, and more people will come together to talk about their experiences. 

NARRATOR #3: Olive harvesting is part of the Palestinian identity and heritage. Olive harvesting is also considered a community gathering. Did you know that the olive tree is a symbol of Palestinian resistance? It's a form of peaceful resistance against occupation. Thousands of Palestinians need to get permission from Israel to go and harvest olives from their own land. Hundreds, if not thousands of olive trees have been destroyed as a result of the occupation, which again makes the olive tree a symbol of Palestinian resistance against oppression because Palestinians continue to harvest olives from their land despite military presence and settler violence. Did you know that one of the oldest olive trees in the world is in Palestine in Bethlehem? And there's even a city in Palestine called Nablus. And it's known for making olive oil soap. So you guys, olive harvesting in Palestine is not just an agricultural practice. It's a symbol of Palestinian identity, resilience, and heritage. 

DALAL: in the example of olive trees and we know that in in the in the in the literature now people understand how this like uprooting olive trees is really part of the Zionist project because they started forcing the Jews across the world to immigrate to Palestine and in order for them to find a similar home as to the ones they used to feel around their European neighbourhoods. They started planting uprooting the olive trees and planting the pine trees or even destroying with fire the Palestinian olive trees. And this is the similar practice that we see in different areas from settlers every year around olive picking season or even before way before that. But yeah, approaching olive trees is a settler colonial act that aims at ethnically cleansing the land and removing that Palestinian identity of it. Because when you're when you're in streets and roads that are circling around settlements, there is little to no trees that you would find, and everything looks foreign to the land. We know that olive trees, fig trees, and the same applies to other citrus trees that those were the natives of the land. And I know that like our ancestors would inherit the land generation after generation. And so we grew up learning how we are rich because we have olive trees and we are rich because we are able to collect these olives and make our olive oil at the end of the season and that would be a sign of richness for people and the more you have the more trees you have the richer you are that's what the like the more trees you have I know It comes with a lot of hard work and it would mean that you would need probably two and a half months into this the season of the olive picking to be able to collect all the olives. But also it was a season where everyone around you would come together to come and help you. And the same applies to growing your seasonal veggies. Like that wasn't just something that you and your kids would do. I would recall that we would be working in the farm like collecting like peppers or beans or aubergine or zucchini and then someone passing by and they would say hi to my dad and they would come join us and help us with the picking or the or collecting that veggie for the day. And then my dad would give them a portion to take home for their family. and then we would continue on with our work. Those experiences would show you the value of the family relationships and the value of the relationship that you have with the land. So it's not just you putting your head down and working from early in the day till late in the in the in the afternoon and that's all to it. But we would collect the veggies and then we would make food with them and eat and then go back to working and then when you have people around you, it would be like taking a break, talk to your neighbour, maybe go help them with something and then you end up helping each other and that was the community that I grew up in. I mean not solely working in the land but that was really an important part of my childhood that I'm really privileged that I had that experience and I can really reflect on that now. Being a Palestinian vegan and living in Palestine is different from interacting with other vegans outside of Palestine because for the majority of my experiences the vegans from who are not Arabs, who are not Palestinian and maybe European or American, but at least those were my experiences. But what I'm trying to say is when we would talk about food, it would only be just the option of you know meal for that day. And when people talk about their activism as vegans, they refer to the things that you will just hear in mainstream vegan spaces or amongst vegan activists that they will tell you certain stories about the animals and our footprint on this earth. our consumption this product or that product which is complicit in say deforestation or animal abuse. But there is always the missing story or really the facts that people don't really connect things to their cultures or to their upbringings. like you wouldn't hear at least I didn't personally hear people telling me about their relationship growing up in a village or growing up in in their city and how that really played into them eventually becoming vegans. I certainly heard the stories of people that their parents were already vegan so they grew up vegan or they grew up vegetarian but then because they don't want to eat the u the dairy products because it doesn't it's not their food it should belong to the animals. yes, food bring people together but when you speak to Arabs you will talk about so many things. You will open discussions about different things from our shared experiences. because settler colonialism is not just unique to Palestine. Amongst Arab people there is that story of colonialism that we grew up with. So when we talk about our lives and our traditions, it's how we really stood fast and showed our resilience that I like to call as resistance in how we defended our existence and presence in our own countries and how our struggles to access food and to access resources from that. We have we should have access to because nobody should be denied water. Nobody should be denied sitting out in nature. But these were things that we struggled with in the different shapes and forms of occupation or colonialism that we experienced throughout our lives. So people telling you about the recipe of hummus in from Syria or from Lebanon or from Egypt like it's not just the recipe of like yeah you soak it you overnight you do this you do that you add these flavours and that's it like no like hummus is one of the items for instance that we are defending now and we try to reclaim the story of because it's not just some appropriated dish that some subtler tell you that this is my food when they don't have the story of that family connection and then all the struggles they really bring people together and because there is a shared history there like no matter where you live. I think also listening to the stories of u like vegans from Arab countries it's yeah like one of the things that we are sort of agreeing on now is that we don't want to use the term ‘veganism’ or like we want to come up with a different word for that because we share the experience of lacking resources in Arabic in the in the first place and I think the podcast came to fill in that gap. So, speaking to Arab vegans from different Arab countries, we all came to that agreement that we didn't really have resources in Arabic, and we really struggled to learn about veganism in Arabic from Arabic resources. So, the podcast came to answer that and fill that gap. at the same time, when I started reaching out to people who are vegans as an invite to join me on the podcast, I noticed that I was using the word al-khoudariyeh الخضري and people were very accustomed to نباتي and apparently al-khoudariyeh الخضري came from and like a vegan activist from Palestine and not everybody really knew that. they weren't really familiar with al-khoudariyeh الخضري but was very common and then I was learning how is really different from my veganism because I should maybe call myself nabati sarنباتي. there was this conflict with the terminology, and I know now that people want to maybe come up with or coin a different term for that because vegans in the Arab world they want to agree on and coin a new terminology for what vegan means in Arabic. because when again when we unpack our relationship with our veganism, we know that mainstream English websites, they don't talk about أبو العلاء المعري Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri, who is a great figure, a scholar, a poet, a philosopher that we grew up reading his literature in our books in in our Arabic books. So we do have that historical figure that we look up to and he heavily wrote about veganism in his literature. So I don't really see why we don't really celebrate أبو العلاء المعري Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri and what we should be also celebrating other Arab people who really were the leaders in the movement. So when you because when you read about what say the vegan society writes about veganism or what they write about the food or the animal rights and this and that on these vegan platforms and websites, you don't really read about أبو العلاء المعري Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri. But unless you're Arab and you grew up reading his literature, you would understand that he was actually - a leading vegan. And he spoke about the vegan values and ethics in his literature, and how he viewed animals and how these sentient beings should be treated equally and not used as food or some product.

[Scene from Mo on Netflix – where Palestinians are engaged in Olive Harvesting and chanting about olives] 

DALAL:  The specific kind of Za’atar that you put into Za’atar the you are making really differs and varies because again I mean here for us Fellahi like where you collect your Za’atar from and if it's like farasi or zeitman or whatever kind of za’atar like or variation of Za’atar you have it really gives you a different taste and I think it's important when people write the recipes that they focus on firstly how Za’atar was actually the food we ate like and that that is the example with manaqish, and then I think the seasoning part came along because in my understanding it was a way for people to be able to use Za’atar because like not many people like understand what we make with Za’atar in sandwich because that for us was an entire meal, or your entire breakfast. But I think it's maybe a way to create some sense of familiarity with Za’atar to use it as some garnish or some seasoning. And but yeah, I think it's Za’atar in manaqeesh or with the bread is yeah, you can just say that it's some mix or some seasoning. but to be fair, yeah, what also makes Za’atar unique is also how you actually mix things together. And yeah, it's because yeah, like I know my mom would tell me different stories and how she specifically blends the ingredients with the palm of her hand. And then she would tell you different stories about her mother or her neighbours or you know things that she grew up doing or how she learned to do things. So there's some mother-daughter quality time there in that making process. So shout out to Mama and shout out to Baba for going to the farm with him, working with him and helping him in the farm. And I think that is really something you don't really see today. And yeah, and now I'm off to get me some Olive Oil(zeit) & Za’atar because I'm craving it so badly. and I promise you like I would go days eating zeit (olive oil) and Za’atar for breakfast and lunch and dinner because - why not? Nothing beats that!

[Music – Soprano – Mariam Tamimi singing] 

Free Palestine.