Falafel Friday to raise money for Palestinian farmers

ELORA  – A falafel fundraiser on Friday will raise money for farmers in Gaza. 

Chef Yasser Qahawish will serve falafel in pitas baked in the Kitchen in the Park Project (KIPP) oven at Bissell Park from 5:30 to 7pm on Oct. 2, while supplies last. 

“I love food, and I love to cook – it feeds my soul, especially when I cook with wood,” Qahawish told the Advertiser. 

The chef has been cooking with wood ovens for a while and said he’s starting to “finally feel like I’m mastering the art.” 

Qahawish will serve traditional Palestinian falafel with chickpeas, herbs, green onions, sauces and a tahini-heavy hummus.  

Wood ovens are sacred to many communities in Palestine and across the world, Qahawish said, as they bring people together to share food. 

A well-built oven can keep its radiant heat for a week, he said, and be used in different ways as the heat changes. 

The oven in Bissell Park will stay warm overnight, and in the morning KIPP will serve cinnamon buns during the Elora Farmers’ Market. 

KIPP will also bring its apple-pressing machine for people to use for free on Oct. 3. 

The falafel fundraiser is taking place in coordination with the People’s Conference for Palestine in Guelph on Oct. 3, Qahawish noted. 

Wood ovens in Palestine

When Qahawish saw the oven in Bissell Park, it reminded him of stories his father, Subhi Qahawish, often shares of families in Jafa coming together to bake bread in his village’s wood oven. 

Qahawish’s maternal grandmother also shared stories about a communal oven back home in Jafa, and of how people would gather and share a meal at the end of the week.  

His parents were forced to leave Jafa in 1948, along with 96,000 of the 100,000 Palestinians there, according to The Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

His mother, Nawal Halawa, left Jafa for Jordan, and was one of the first female journalists in the Middle East covering regional politics in the 1970s and 1980s. She is also the author of A Girl’s Paradise Lost. 

His father moved from Jafa to Gaza, and remembers going down to the beach once a month for a box of sardines. They prepared them in a few different ways, including grinding them down and mixing with tahini, flour, eggs, onion and parsley and shaping them into handburgers to make sardine kafta, which they’d cover in olive oil and cook in the community oven.

“That’s the one dish my dad talks about all the time,” Qahawish said.

His father eventually left Gaza after finishing high school. Neither of his parents could return to Palestine until after they became Canadian citizens.    

They now live in Montreal, but will be visiting here this weekend for the falafel fundraiser and the conference.

Palestinian music will be playing Friday evening, and Qahawish expects his parents, who are about 90 and 87, will dance in the space in front of the wood oven.

KIPP Elora

Qahawish has lived in Aboyne with his family since last summer, and said he is enjoying meeting people in Centre Wellington and becoming part of the community. 

Volunteering with KIPP is a way Qahawish contributes to the local community, and he’s energized by how the oven brings neighbours together through food. 

“It’s so connected to how it’s always been for Palestinians, always coming together around wood-powered ovens, and even more so now,” Qahawish’s wife Christie Young said. 

“Eating together is a big deal,” said Qahawish. 

“It’s what holds you together ... it strengthens the fabric of community,” said Young.   

They praised Chris Jess and Staci Barron for their work sustaining the oven and its community connections. 

KIPP is a volunteer-run, community-funded organization that built the oven in 2011 and holds community events from May to October.

Barron said the project has been a “community capacity building endeavour to bring everybody together ... this is literally a community build.” 

Fundraising for farmers

Qahawish said he hopes the event will remind people of the struggles that people in Gaza and the West Bank are facing “in the aftermath of the genocide.” 

But the fundraiser is not political, Qahawish, Young and Barron said. 

“It’s for community, about community,” Young said. And it’s about ensuring people have enough to eat.

“Feeding people is not political, it’s humanitarian,” Barron said. 

“KIPP supports feeding people and supporting farmers anywhere in the world.”  

The money raised will all go to Arduna, or Our Land,  a grassroots organization supporting Gazan food sovereignty through farmers in Gaza. 

The money goes to about 25 farming families in north Gaza, whose work is more important than ever, Young said, as the blockade is stopping food from coming in and “people are starving and need to be able to feed themselves.” 

It pays for seeds, seedlings, tools, irrigation and training, Young said.   

According to Arduna officials, it is “the legacy project of the courageous martyred farmer Yousef Abu Rabee,” and is “tended by  Yousef’s family and closest friends, continuing his vision of agricultural autonomy and food sovereignty of Gaza.”

The Arduna farmers’ crops include eggplant, peppers, coriander, radishes, tomatoes and molokhia. 

For more information about Arduna visit givebutter.com/7p5gcx. For more information about KIPP visit kippelora.com. For more information about the conference visit click here.  

The falafel will be vegetarian with no hot sauces, Qahawish noted, and they’re asking for a minimum donation of $15 per plate.