Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown – Gaza and the West Bank

Published on Sep 19, 2013
***NEW*** Anthony Bourdain – Parts Unknown Season 2 – Gaza & the West Bank (720p HD).This episode also displays the ever sad state of the U.S. “news” media, when a chef does a better job exposing what’s really happening in Palestine as opposed to mainstream journalists. I have a newfound respect for Anthony Bourdain: “Many, if not most of these guys, are not too sympathetic to my country or my ethnicity, I’m guessing. But, there’s that hospitality thing. Anywhere you go in the Muslim world, it seems, no matter what, you feed your guests – you do your best – to make them feel at home.” Enjoy.

Cooking and eating under siege

Gaza is burning. The bombs are falling day and night, ripping through buildings, eviscerating entire families. As the horrors unfold, can we imagine what life is like at this moment in a home, in a kitchen, at the dinner table in Gaza?

It is Ramadan, after all, as we were made painfully aware over the weekend when an Israeli F-16 strike killed all 25 members of the Abu Jamaa family, including 17 children, three pregnant women and a grandmother, as they sat down for iftar, the evening meal. And even if it weren’t, families — that is, women — still have to go about getting food on the table, tending to the mundane routines of life that keep them sane. How do you feed your family under bombardment when nowhere, not even your dinner table, is safe and when there is no access to markets and farms?

Even more important, after the smoke clears how do families continue with their lives under a longstanding siege that aims to deprive them of any sense of normalcy, freedom and productivity? What role do women, especially, play in this daily business of survival?