Rights and Accountability 13 August 2025
The Jordan International Food Festival stirred accusations of insensitivity for celebrating food and abundance while Israel deliberately starves Palestinians in Gaza. (via Facebook)
As Israel starves Palestinians in Gaza to death, drone displays lit up the skies of Amman – just 90 miles away – to promote the Jordan International Food Festival.
The event, which concluded on Monday, was marketed as a “celebration of food and culture,” part of an effort to boost food tourism to the country. But inside Jordan, it generated anger and calls for boycott.
Official tourism body Visit Jordan bragged about the presence of Michelin-starred chefs and a lineup of DJ’s and musicians ensuring an “environment of music and fun throughout the day and night.”
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in Jordan saluted “the uprising of our people to reject the holding of a food festival during the most heinous, filthy and cruel war of extermination in human history, where starvation is used as a weapon of subjugation, humiliation and collective punishment against our people in Gaza.”
The week-long festival - now in its second year – hosted chefs from around the world for live cooking demonstrations, culinary panels, vendor showcases and more under the theme of “Gathered” – purportedly to celebrate “community, connection and the joy of being together.”
The festival “is not just about food; it’s about the people, traditions and stories behind every dish,” the website states.
For $10 to $140 dollars per ticket, anyone could feast at the festival in the Jordanian capital.
Except, of course, any of the two million Palestinians trying to survive the US-Israeli engineered famine in the Gaza Strip.
The higher priced tickets gained entry to “collaboration dinners,” where patrons could enjoy five-course menus prepared by world renowned chefs.
Participants could attend masterclass sessions such as “From Dough to Delight – The Art of European Pastry and Organic Baking,” with Master Confectioner Günther Koerffer, a German-born Swedish chef who has worked in Tel Aviv.
Insensitivity
The festival came under fire for what many in Jordan see as the breathtaking insensitivity to celebrate luxurious food and abundance as hundreds of Palestinians are shot down every day while trying to retrieve meager aid and others die of hunger.
People in Jordan circulated an online flyer protesting the festival and what they described as “ignoring the voice of hunger in Gaza.”
It denounces the “normalization of fake entertainment at the expense of blood and hunger.”
Festival organizers apparently disabled comments on the festival’s Instagram profile, likely due to the torrent of criticism.
The festival’s website lists only participating chefs and musicians, omitting sponsors and vendors.
But a document apparently circulated by the Jordan Chamber of Industry to local restaurants and businesses ahead of the festival outlines strategic partnership packages starting at $282,000, and lesser sponsorships ranging in price up to to tens of thousands of dollars.
Based on social media postings, corporate sponsors included South Korea’s Samsung.
The document also describes an “embassy pavilion,” offering foreign governments an opportunity to showcase their national cuisines at the festival.
Germany, which has been second only to the United States in its open support of Israel’s genocide, was officially represented at the festival, according to its ambassador in Amman.
In a particularly cruel irony, the focus of the German display was bread.
Ineffective “aid”
The festival announced that, in partnership with the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization, it would send aid convoys to the Gaza Strip, and donate ticket proceeds.
Sending aid trucks, however, does not guarantee their entry. It is also notable that the festival’s website makes no mention of Gaza whatsoever.
There are approximately 22,000 aid trucks stuck at the crossings, according to the Gaza government media office.
Most of the trucks “belong to UN and international organizations and various entities. The Israeli occupation is deliberately preventing their entry as part of a systematic policy of engineered starvation, blockade and chaos, as part of the ongoing genocide.”
Jordan’s air force, along with such staunchly pro-Israel governments as Canada, Spain, Germany and France have continued to carry out food air drops over Gaza in recent weeks.
Humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, call these drops – which can only haphazardly deliver the equivalent of a few truck loads of food – dangerous and ineffective as a means to feed more than two million people in Gaza who are being deliberately deprived of food by Israel.
They are also deadly and demeaning.
In effect, these air drops are public relations exercises for countries complicit in Israel’s genocide.
The effect – whether intentional or not – is to relieve Israel and its backers of pressure to lift the total siege Tel Aviv has imposed on the coastal enclave with the openly announced intention of starving the population.
Jordan has not suspended its diplomatic relations with Israel, despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Rogel Rachman, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan who was appointed weeks before 7 October 2023, regularly posts on Twitter/X denying that starvation is even taking place in Gaza.
Food is not “apolitical”
One celebrity chef addressed the anguish many in his profession feel about Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
“I make television shows about food. I spend part of my professional life glorifying what’s on the plate,” wrote Emmy winning TV personality and James Beard Award-winner Andrew Zimmern, earlier this month. “Telling stories of abundance, creativity, indulgence. It’s beautiful work. It can be deeply meaningful. But lately, I wonder what it means in a world where people are dying because they don’t have food.”
In Gaza, Zimmern notes, “There are children who haven’t eaten in days. Mothers who die while nursing babies with no milk left in their breasts. Aid workers killed trying to deliver flour. And somehow, we are not rioting in the streets. Somehow, we are scrolling past it.”
“Let’s stop mincing words. Fatal starvation is not a natural disaster,” Zimmern says. “You don’t accidentally starve two million people. You choose to block aid trucks. You choose to decimate infrastructure. You choose to turn bread into a bargaining chip.”
“Enough pretending that food is apolitical,” he admonishes, urging everyone to speak out and demand action from their governments to stop the genocide.
Zimmern, writing in The Minnesota Star Tribune, makes no mention of the festival in Jordan, and had no apparent connection to it, but his message echoes many of the criticisms from Jordanians outraged at the gourmet celebrations in Amman.
Ali Abunimah contributed reporting.
Comments
Where is the "Arab Street"
Permalink P R replied on
This so-called food festival at the time of the intolerable man-made famine in Gaza by Israel is disgusting, to say the least. But the question is, where is the proverbial "Arab Street"? Why aren't the Arab peoples rising up to overthrow these governments which are hand-in-glove with Israel, in the hope of some crumbs from the imperial table of the USA? Or break through the borders of Gaza to relieve the people being starved and bombarded by Israel? Or did the "Arab Street" never exist at all...?
“Normalcy” during genocide
Permalink Robert replied on
Clearly attending weekly rallies and expressing outrage to leadership, though necessary, isn’t enough.
Well meaning friends encourage maintaining “balance” in our lives, but the only counterbalance to genocide is finding a way to end it and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Israel Fight Binge Eating
Permalink Peter Purich replied on
Appalling! Tourism?? That Hashemite "kingdom" is another PA "Israeli" collaborater. Meanwhile, the EU helps "Israel" with their binge eating (https://electronicintifada.net...)!
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