“Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”

-from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” (1970)

By BERNIE BELLAN I wasn’t actually thinking about Sabra Hummus until one day recently when I was sitting together with a group of guys – some of whom were Israeli-born when, out of the blue, one of them asked me if I knew why you couldn’t find Sabra Hummus anywhere in Winnipeg?

“Can’t find it?” I thought. Surely it must be available somewhere here. I said that I thought it must be on a grocery shelf at least in Sobeys on Taylor because if any store was going to have a product with as obvious an Israeli name as “Sabra,” it was going to be Sobeys on Taylor.

After all, going back a few years, anytime you went shopping for hummus the Sabra brand was ubiquitous.

So, I said to the fellow who had asked the question that I was now curious to delve further into whether Sabra Hummus had indeed disappeared from Winnipeg store shelves. I added that I would start by inquiring at the Sobeys store on Taylor – where I knew the manager, Dave McDonald, and that I would ask Dave whether it’s true that Sabra Hummus is no longer available at his store.

I emailed Dave asking him that question but, while I was waiting for a response, I began to search on the internet to see whether there might be an explanation as to what had happened to Sabra Hummus – and whether its disappearance from store shelves wasn’t something unique to Winnipeg.

Naturally, I began with a Google search for Sabra Hummus. While the search led me to discover many different things about Sabra Hummus, the one thing that I found most surprising is that Sabra Hummus, despite its Israeli name, is now wholly owned by PepsiCo.

It was when I received a phone call from a Sobeys representative in response to an email I had sent that it also emerged that, as has been the case with many other products that come from the US, Sobeys had decided to stop importing Sabra Hummus (which used to come in 30 different varieties) ever since Trump imposed his tariffs on Canadian exports going back to February of this year. (Sobeys, by the way, owns many different brands of stores: Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, Farn Boy, Longo’s, and Lawtons Drugs.)

But, to my even greater surprise, I learned from a representative of PepsiCo that Sabra Hummus is not even being produced any more – at least not in the plastic tubs that had the very recognizable Sabra logo on them. I’ll have more about what the PepsiCo representative wrote in an email to me, but first – a brief history of Sabra Hummus – and the many problems it’s endured over the years.

Most of my information came from – where else? Wikipedia, but it turned out the Times of Israel also had a very interesting article – written in December 2024, that examined the effect that the Boycott Divest Sanctions movement (BDS) had on Sabra Hummus.

Yet, while both the Wikipedia and the Times of Israel articles did talk about the problems that the Sabra brand had been encountering in recent years, it was only when I received that email from a representative of PepsiCo that I was able to verify that, as of now, Sabra Hummus is no longer being manufactured altogether although, as I’ll explain later, Pepsico does plan on bringing it back into production in 2026.

What happened to Sabra Hummus then?

Here’s some of the information about Sabra Hummus that is largely taken from the Wikipedia article about Sabra Hummus:

“The company was founded in 1986 by Zohar Norman and Yehuda Pearl as Sabra-Blue & White Foods. The company was bought in 2005 by Israeli food manufacturer Strauss.

“In March 2008, Strauss entered a joint-venture partnership with Frito-Lay, a division of the multinational PepsiCo corporation. Strauss owned 50% and PepsiCo 50% of the company. In November 2008, the company announced the construction of a new $61 million plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, expected to employ 260 people and come on line in mid-2010. The company grew over 50% between August 2008 and August 2009.

According to Wikipedia, by 2016, Sabra Hummus had become the dominant player when it came to selling hummus in the United States: “By 2016, Sabra had gained a 60% market share of hummus in the United States, and, through its co-ownership and sales channels with PepsiCo, was close to $1 billion in annual sales.”

The Times of Israel article noted that Sabra’s share of the hummus market in the US grew even more: “At the start of 2021, Sabra Dipping Company — which is jointly owned by Strauss Group and PepsiCo — sold US supermarkets nearly two-thirds of their hummus.”

Yet, it all seemed to start coming apart in recent years. By 2024, according to Wikipedia, Sabra’s share of the US hummus market had dropped to only “36%.”

There are many reasons for Sabra’s rapid descent from dominance of the US hummus market and both the Wikipedia and Times of Israel articles examine those reasons, but it does seem strange that, notwithstanding the drop in sales that Sabra might have suffered in the past few years, PepsiCo has simply stopped producing it altogether.

I wouldn’t have believed that until I received the email from a representative of Pepsico, to which I referred earlier. Here’s what I was told: “Regrettably, we are temporarily stepping back from full-size hummus tubs to improve product offerings. We know that’s a big disappointment since fans like you have been looking high and low for it!

“Our full-size hummus tubs are expected back in late 2026. In the meantime, our Guacamole and Hummus Snackers remain available at many grocery stores across Canada.”

After reading that email, one might be forgiven for thinking that something drastic – something beyond loss of market share, had happened to Sabra Hummus.

But Sabra had had huge problems in the past – from which it always bounced back.

Here’s what Wikipedia noted about problems Sabra had encountered in the past: “On April 8, 2015, Sabra recalled 30,000 cases of its classic hummus after a tub in Michigan tested positive for Listeria.”

Then, the Wikipedia article went on to say: “On November 19, 2016, Sabra voluntarily recalled multiple hummus varieties across the U.S. after Listeria was discovered at one of its manufacturing plants, though the company stated the bacteria had not been found in any of its actual products.

“In March 2021, Sabra recalled about 2,100 cases of 10 oz. Classic Hummus, following a routine inspection by the FDA in the US, due to a possible salmonella contamination. The recall affected 16 states in the U.S.”

Yet, despite all that, as has previously been noted, the Times of Israel article of December 2024 pointed out that, prior to that March 2021 product recall, Sabra Hummus still dominated the US market for hummus, to the extent that nearly two-thirds of the hummus sold by US supermarkets came from Sabra.

To this point we haven’t mentioned one other factor that certainly affected sales of Sabra Hummus, although to what extent is very hard to determine: The concerted boycott campaign which was part of the BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) movement that targeted Sabra Hummus in particular, and which had been started at several different universities in the US, beginning in 2010.

According to the Times of Israel December 2024 article, the “campaign against Sabra hummus started on the US West Coast 14 years ago, when anti-Israel activists began denouncing Sabra for donating food to the IDF Golani Brigade.

However, despite that campaign having “kicked into higher gear”… with “hundreds of supermarkets and other stores in North America and Europe” having had stickers denouncing Israel placed on tubs of Sabra Hummus, the ToI article insists that the BDS campaign which was carried on mostly on US college campuses was not a major factor in declining Sabra Hummus sales.

Instead, the Times of Israel article claims it was the March 2021 product recall that was the decisive factor in Sabra Hummus sales plummeting. According to the ToI article, “a salmonella contamination recall on products made at Sabra’s Virginia factory took a devastating toll on the brand, which lost half its market share in just one quarter.”

And yet – to make matters even more complicated, an article in still another publication suggested that, notwithstanding that March 2021 product recall – which also led to a complete shutdown of Sabra’s primary manufacturing plant in Virginia, sales began to bounce back in 2022!

In a December 2022 article in an online publication titled “Manufacturing Dive,” Sabra CEO Joey Bergstein is quoted as saying that the brand has been “‘consistently climbing back,’ and it has regained its No. 1 position in the hummus category, according to IRI data cited by Sabra. When it was missing from shelves, he said more than half of consumers decided not to buy hummus instead of switching to another brand. Those who did switch are coming back to Sabra, the IRI data showed, and the brand is taking back market share.

“‘When you stop production, you open the door for a competitor,’ Bergstein said. ‘We’ve been able to grow back in a relatively short period following that disruption, which I think speaks to the health of the brand.’”

In the final analysis, there is a combination of factors that have led to the disappearance of Sabra Hummus from store shelves – not, as I first thought, perhaps only in Winnipeg but, as it turned out, everywhere in Canada and, as I learned after reading that email from the PepsiCo representative – in the US as well.

There were multiple incidents of suspected contamination of Sabra products; there was the campaign that was part of the BDS movement to boycott Israeli products – especially Sabra products; and finally, there was the decision by major Canadian grocers to stop importing products from the US.

Although I did like Sabra Hummus, I can’t say that I’m heartbroken to learn of its disappearance. But it is sad to think that a product which had such an identifiably Israeli name is no longer available – even if that product had stopped being manufactured in Israel years ago.

One more note: In 2018 PepsiCo acquired another well known Israeli food company: SodaStream. SodaStream still has a plant in Israel although, again after coming under fire for having a plant on the West Bank, SodaStream closed that plant in 2015 and opened a new plant within the green line. Chalk that one up to a victory for the BDS movement. I wonder whether, in the future, we’ll learn more about how much damage the BDS movement really did cause Sabra Hummus. It still seems strange to me that a product which was, until quite recently, the dominant player in its field, has simply disappeared. It suggests to me that the BDS movement had quite a bit more impact than one might be willing to concede.

But at lower rates than people who identify with a religion

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Sept. 4, 2025) – Around the world, many people who do not identify with any religion – a population that has climbed rapidly in the recent past – nevertheless hold a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs, according to a Pew Research Center study of 22 countries with relatively large religiously unaffiliated populations.

In general, religiously unaffiliated people – sometimes called “nones” – are less likely to hold spiritual beliefs, less likely to engage in religious practices and more likely to take a skeptical view of religion’s impact on society than are Christians, Muslims and people who identify with other religions. But sizable percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults do hold some religious or spiritual beliefs.  Here are some of the key findings of the study:Who are religious “nones”? “Nones” are adults who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In nearly all of the 22 countries analyzed in the study, the largest subgroup of “nones” is people who say their religion is “nothing in particular,” rather than those who identify as atheist or agnostic. For more information about these three subgroups, refer to the report’s overview.

Do “nones” hold religious beliefs or follow religious practices?In all 22 countries surveyed, about a fifth or more of “nones” believe in life after death. The shares who say there is definitely or probably an afterlife range from 19% of unaffiliated adults in Hungary to 65% in Peru. Large shares of “nones” in some countries believe that “there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it.” For instance, 61% of “nones” in Mexico and 65% in Brazil express this belief. Many religiously unaffiliated adults also express belief in God. This includes solid majorities of “nones” in South Africa (77%) and in several Latin American countries, such as Brazil (92%), Colombia (86%) and Chile (69%). By contrast, religiously unaffiliated adults in Europe and Australia are much less inclined to believe in God. Just 18% of “nones” in Australia, 10% in Sweden and 9% in Hungary are believers. Compared with the large percentages of “nones” who hold religious beliefs, smaller shares tend to engage in the religious practices asked about in the survey.

How do “nones” view religion’s impact on society?Many “nones” express negative views about religion’s influence on society. In 12 of the 22 countries studied, religiously unaffiliated adults are more likely to say religion encourages intolerancethan to say it encourages tolerance. In every country included in the analysis, at least half of “nones” say religion encourages superstitious thinking. Across the countries surveyed, a median of 53% say religion mostly hurts society, while a median of 38% say it mostly helps.

How important is religion to “nones”? Most religiously unaffiliated people feel that religion plays only a minor role in their lives. In half of the 22 countries analyzed, at least six-in-ten “nones” say religion is not at all important to them. In a few countries, however, about half or more of “nones” say religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives. This is the case in Brazil, Colombia, Peru and South Africa – possibly reflecting the prevalence in these countries of traditional African, Afro-Caribbean, or Indigenous and Indian religious beliefs and practices (even among people who don’t identify with any religion).

These are among the key findings of a new Pew Research Center analysis of 2023-24 surveys conducted in 22 countries with samples of religious “nones” that are large enough to analyze and report separately. The Center interviewed more than 34,000 respondents in the 22 countries, including more than 10,000 who are religiously unaffiliated. This analysis was produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

To read the report, click here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/09/04/many-religious-nones-around-the-world-hold-spiritual-beliefs/

By HENRY SREBRNIK Australia and Canada share many similarities, and so do their Jewish communities. Most Jews live in two large cities, in Australia’s case, Melbourne and Sydney. And they have been well off and integrated into society. Yet in both countries, there has been an unprecedented rise in antisemitism.

I would submit that a majority of Australians and Canadians have now lost sympathy for Israel. It doesn’t matter if what they hear about Israel being engaged in genocide in Gaza is true or not, nor even if they don’t believe all or most of it. The bottom line is that they see Israel as engaging in war crimes. (As for Americans, a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University between Aug. 21 and 25 found that half of voters – and 77 per cent of the Democrats among them — believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.)

On July 29, a national poll in Australia delivered a deeply unsettling message. The survey revealed that just 24 per cent of Australians hold a positive view of Jews, while 28 per cent express negative views, and the rest are indifferent or unsure. I’m guessing Canadian numbers wouldn’t be all that different. 

And this comes after two years of unrelenting escalation, during which antisemitic incidents in Australia and Canada have surged by over 300 per cent. Synagogues have been vandalized, and Jewish businesses attacked. Marches have featured chants glorifying terror and calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

On August 3, tens of thousands of Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge under the banner “March for Humanity — Save Gaza.” Among them were former foreign minister Bob Carr, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Australians took to the streets again three weeks later to advocate for Palestinians. A man at the very front of that first procession held aloft a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

Such symbolism has become even more disturbing in light of recent revelations. On August 26, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, along with Mike Burgess, Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), confirmed that Iran directed the arson attacks against Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, a Jewish-owned business in Sydney, last October, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne two months later. Yet even this disclosure will change little. 

In fact, Australia denied entry to Israeli parliamentarian Simcha Rothman ahead of a planned solidarity visit with the country’s Jewish community. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke justified the move by claiming Rothman was coming “to spread a message of hate and division.” Rothman, chair of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, had been scheduled to meet with victims of antisemitism, visit Jewish institutions and address Jewish schools and synagogues.

Readers know that Canada is no better. Within days of the October 7, 2023 pogrom, pro-Hamas protesters were emboldened by inaction on the part of authorities and police forces. What followed has been months of harassment, intimidation and open antisemitism, at levels not seen here in more than 80 years.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather last month issued a call to action amid growing antisemitism across Canada, co-signed by 31 of his Liberal colleagues. Citing Statistic Canada data on police-reported hate crimes, he pointed out that while Jews make up only one per cent of Canada’s population, they are the victims of 70 per cent of reported religious-based acts of hate.

All but six of the signatories were MPs from Ontario or Quebec. But why did the other 137 members of the Liberal caucus not sign on? “Why is fighting antisemitism seemingly determined by constituency demographics,” University of Ottawa Law Professor Michael Geist asked in a comment posted on X.

As Geist also noted in “There is a Growing List of Unsafe Places for the Jewish Community in Canada,” an August 29 article in the Globe and Mail, the rise of antisemitism in this country “has too often been met with inaction and generic statements against all forms of hate, or assurances that this behaviour wasn’t reflective of Canadian values. As politicians remain silent and law enforcement stays on the sidelines, the language becomes more violent in nature amidst allegations of criminality directed at an entire community. The cumulative effect is the gradual erasure of a visible Jewish presence in Canada.”

For the past two years, we’ve watched the unthinkable become normalized, and still, the silence has persisted. We believed that behind the chaos of social media and the radicalism of campus protests, there was a steady, principled middle who would never let hate take hold. But we were wrong. Many condemnations were merely lip service. Institutional policies were rarely enforced. And while we heard reassurances from officials that “this is not who we are,” perhaps it’s exactly who “we” are.

So why did we believe?  Because the alternative is that the “silent majority” doesn’t exist and that antisemitism is being tolerated. It means that when politicians like Albanese or Mark Carney announce they will recognize a Palestinian state that has no defined borders, a non-functioning and certainly non-democratic government, while Hamas still holds hostages and preaches genocide, they are not defying their supporters but catering to them. Albanese later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that his decision was partly motivated by a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu that made it clear that the Israeli prime minister was “in denial” about the situation in Gaza.

The pleas of Australia’s and Canada’s Jews to reconsider this absurd move fell on deaf ears. It means that we are not surrounded by quiet allies, but by people who don’t care. When attacks on Jewish gatherings or buildings take place, most non-Jews, even if they don’t approve, are unlikely to be very angry or upset about it. We “deserve” it, in their view, by supporting a nation committing crimes and mass murder.

This requires a complete change in our psychological mindset regarding our place in society. From the 1950s until recently, the “default mode” that we assumed to be true was that most people, save some antisemites here and there, were fine with us as members of the larger community, and deserving of respect and protection. They didn’t have to be our “friends” to feel that way.

No longer. We can’t continue to be “shocked” when the leaders of the world, even countries like ours and Australia, no longer have any particular interest in our welfare (as is demonstrated day after day in news stories). And it’s not just because our enemies have greater domestic electoral clout. It’s just easier for most people to distance themselves from us quietly – which is not that hard to do for those, including most politicians, who have never moved much in circles where they’d be close to Jews. 

We are on our own, and this will require a psychological adjustment. It doesn’t mean most people are now antisemites or supporters of Hamas or Islamists. But they will not particularly care to support us. We are now associated with a country they see in a very negative light, one many consider even worse than China or – yes! – Putin’s Russia. Only those people with genuine historical or religious knowledge, clearly a minority, will understand our plight. We must get used to this new reality.  

Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.