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This Israel-born, Jewish chef is demanding a cease-fire
“I’m devastated and exhausted,” Ora Wise told me on a video call from her New York City apartment, her facial features flickering between fatigue and animation.
Just three days earlier, the chef and food activist marched in the nation’s capital to call for a cease-fire in Israel’s siege of Gaza. The offensive has claimed the lives of over 10,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them children, since Oct. 7, when over 1,400 Israelis were killed in Hamas’ terrorist attacks.
The day after our interview, Wise was scheduled to appear in court for charges of obstructing traffic and failure to disperse during another cease-fire demonstration the previous month.
In Washington, D.C., this past weekend, Wise marched alongside three Palestinian American chefs — Reem Assil of Reem’s California in Oakland, Omar Anani of Saffron De Twah in Detroit, and Marcelle Afram of Shababi in Washington — and Kimberly Chou Tsun An, a writer and farmer. The five of them demonstrated under the banner of Hospitality for Humanity, a coalition of food professionals organizing for a cease-fire and against U.S. funding of the Israeli military. Assil, who was a full-time labor organizer before she became a professional chef, initiated the project when she reached out to her four collaborators a few weeks ago.
For Wise, who helps lead a food justice nonprofit called FIG NYC, the march was the culmination of a journey that started in Jerusalem, where she was born to a rabbi father. She spent her childhood between Israel and the United States, and describes working as an English tutor in a Bedouin community in the West Bank as a turning point in her relationship to the region.
In 2017, on the same nights that high-profile chefs around the world cooked in Israeli restaurants as part of the government-funded Round Tables festival, Wise joined Assil, Chou Tsun An, and Palestinian American chef Amanny Ahmad in organizing a pop-up series called the Asymmetrical Table, spotlighting Palestinian cuisine. The following year, they were part of a successful effort to get the featured New York chef to pull out of the Israeli festival.
Ora Wise leads a cooking demonstration at the New York Botanical Garden. Courtesy of Ora Wise
On Oct. 29, Hospitality for Humanity released an open letter that now has over 1,000 signatures — from chefs, food writers, farmers and other members of the food industry — of people pledging to advocate for a cease-fire and an end to unconditional U.S. funding of the Israeli government, boycott pro-Israel products, events and trips, and participate in events that help the Palestinian cause. The coalition also released a downloadable restaurant menu insert that includes a phone number for the U.S. Congress, Instagram accounts to follow, and a QR code that links to info on protests planned around the country.
I spoke with Wise about her journey towards fighting for Palestinian rights, the destruction of Palestinian culinary practices, and why protecting those practices is a Jewish issue.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How have your views on Israel and Palestine developed over time?
I was raised Zionist. I went to Jewish day school, conservative Jewish summer camp, synagogue, Sunday school and youth groups. I was raised to feel this passionate possessiveness of that land and this deep connection to Israel.
When I was a child, we were living in Minnesota, and we did joint programs with the Lakota tribe and learned in gruesome detail the history of genocide and colonization here in the United States.
Ora Wise, raising her fist in this photograph, said that teaching English in a Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank was a turning point for her understanding of Israel and Palestine. Courtesy of Ora Wise
When I was 18 years old, I was living in Jerusalem and became an English tutor working with the Jahalin Bedouin, a semi-nomadic Semitic people indigenous to that land. They had been kicked out of their homes in the Negev desert when the State of Israel was created, and they had been displaced to the West Bank. The Israeli government was forcibly relocating them yet again, in order to expand the Ma’ale Adumim settlement. They were forced to live on what I came to understand was a reservation.
I remember walking on a dusty path between shacks fashioned out of corrugated metal shipping crates. It was on land that was barely livable, only about 500 meters (a third of a mile) from Jerusalem’s largest city dump, which was, of course, not in Jerusalem, but in Palestinian territory. So it clicked for me: “What is different here than what I’ve been raised to believe was wrong in the creation of the United States?”
What was the genesis of Hospitality for Humanity?
For us, as food workers, we wanted to make sure that our community was extending its values and practices — around sustainability, equity and health — to include Palestinians.
We know that in Palestine, the Israeli military occupation suppresses, destroys and controls Palestinian foodways — whether it is Israeli soldiers themselves, or armed settlers, destroying or stealing wheat harvests or olive harvests.
Before 1948, Palestinians were predominantly an agricultural people. Now, Israel has constructed an apartheid wall that divides a Palestinian farming village from its farming lands, so farmers either lose their land or have to go through a military checkpoint. Even those that somehow manage, against all odds, to continue to grow their crops, are not able to get much of their produce to market through the Israeli system of separate roads, military closures and checkpoints.
How does food fit into the movement to boycott products that support the Israeli government?
The strategy of the Palestinian-led global boycott movement is based on complicity, not identity — institutions, not individuals.
Ora Wise stands in front of a mural outside of a cafe in Ireland. Courtesy of Ora Wise
I’ll give an example. Sabra hummus is on the boycott list. It’s owned by Pepsi-Cola and the Strauss company. The Strauss company gives money to the Israel Defense Forces.
SodaStream’s production facilities are in a so-called free trade zone in the occupied West Bank. So that’s why we boycott SodaStream and Sabra Hummus.
Hospitality for Humanity’s statement also describes the “appropriation” of Palestinian food traditions by Israel. Can you explain what you mean by that?
The branding of a pan-Arab and North African dish as “Israeli” is something that needs to be unpacked in the same way that the food world has examined how white chefs have been co-opting different Asian diaspora foods or Mexican foods or Black Southern foods, rebranding them, redressing them, and profiting from them.
It’s really disingenuous when people claim, “oh, it’s just hummus,” or that these are just “hummus wars.” We’re not talking about some just trivial squabble over ownership. What we’re talking about is one people dominating another people.
I grew up eating, making and loving these foods, and I continue to do so. But I’m very committed to sourcing from Palestinian producers and making sure that the Palestinian authorship of these foods is central.
How has your Judaism informed your approach to this project?
So many Jewish rituals and traditions are based in food: We tell stories through food, we celebrate and mourn through food. And food has always been really central to my family and traditions. So I’m heartbroken to see another people being denied that in my name.
I was also raised to celebrate and honor the land — to recognize the seven sacred plant species named in the Torah, including olives, pomegranates, dates and barley. These are all ancient crops that Palestinians have been stewarding for generations, that are being destroyed by Israeli settlers. The State of Israel has bulldozed thousands of olive trees.
I care about and love this land. And that’s exactly why I’m going to fight like hell against the way that the State of Israel is destroying it, and everything that I love and value about it.
The post This Israel-born, Jewish chef is demanding a cease-fire appeared first on The Forward.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.