Camel Controversies and Pork Politics in British Mandate Palestine

ABSTRACT

World War II brought an industrial boom to British Mandate Palestine, but also extreme inflation and scarcity in essential commodities and foodstuffs. In Europe, fresh meat shortages created a market for meat preserves. In Palestine, meat shortages caused an unusual surge in marginal meats, namely, pork and camel. This article traces how pork and camel meat were bred or brought to wartime Palestine, the unusual visibility they gained, and the controversies they caused. Through the struggles of Palestinian Christian pig breeders and disputes over the Jewish consumption of pigs and camels, this article highlights the haphazardness of British provisioning politics as well as the evocative relationship between humans and the animals they rear and consume. Illustrating the decoding of kosher law in a new environment, camel controversies and pork politics illuminate a moment of transition for wartime Jews, from a religious minority in Europe to a settler-colonial minority in Palestine.

KEYWORDS:

• Camel
• pork
• meat
• kosher foodways
• settler colonialism
• animal husbandry
• urban history
• British Mandate Palestine

Introduction

World War I and II altered agriculture, trade, and dietary patterns in many regions of the globe. Inflation, military intake, government control, and disruption of commercial routes created widespread shortages and caloric insecurity.¹ Though many communities lacked staple starches, a memorable feature of wartime meals was the absence of fresh meat. In Europe, governments attempted to substitute fresh meat with various creations from frozen meats to meat extracts.² In British Mandate Palestine (1918–1948), added military presence brought an industrial and infrastructural boom to the country during World War II but also extreme inflation.³ Consuming fresh meat in wartime Palestine depended on the ability to pay inflated premiums for favored meats, or a willingness to ingest animals at the margins of the meat trade.

For the diets of most Palestinians, meat was not as important as grains, pulses, and other plants, but despite colonial misconceptions, Palestinians were not innately vegetarian.⁴ Meat consumption depended on seasonality, economic ability, and regional trade. Peasants owned livestock primarily for labor, and Bedouins bred animals for the regional livestock trade.⁵ The country’s climate, customs, agricultural traditions, and regional markets developed a meat culture that favored sheep’s meat. But in the interwar period, Palestine’s Muslim majority, Christian minority, and small Sephardi community were joined by an influx of European Jewish settlers who became the country’s biggest meat consumers and shifted the market toward beef.⁶

During World War II, however, Palestine’s prized meats were largely unattainable. To offset shortages in cattle, sheep, and goat meat, the British Food Controller, as the officer in charge of wartime provisioning policies, encouraged local pig breeding and camel imports. In mainland Britain, as in its overseas territories, provisioning policies were part of imperial techniques of governance as well as essential components in the success of agricultural developmental schemes.⁷ Yet how British bureaucrats enacted food policies, and how locals in various British territories reacted to and interacted with such systems differed.⁸ In Palestine, British provisioning policies were designed to encourage local animal husbandry and meat production, yet in practice, the government’s actions stimulated fleeting booms and busts, angering locals by exacerbating the insecurity of eating and earning a living during wartime.⁹ British wartime policies also promoted unusual shifts in the country. Slaughterhouse records from Palestine reveal an unprecedented trend: compared to pre-war figures, pig slaughter increased fivefold, and camel slaughter soared between sixfold to eighteenfold.¹⁰ In a Muslim majority country where Jews were the biggest meat-eaters, colonial policies that promoted pork and camel meat are noteworthy because neither is kosher and only camel is Halal.

This article explores how pork and camel meat became briefly and unusually popular in wartime Palestine. By examining the controversies surrounding the production and consumption of these two types of meat, the article illustrates how global and regional insecurity caused some groups in Palestine – especially Christian pig breeders and urban Jewish administrators – to define themselves, relate to others, and set boundaries along meat lines. For Jewish settlers in Palestine, this article also elucidates how the meanings of meat shifted in accordance with the community’s shifting realities, even when foodways were supposedly strictly governed by the laws of kashrut.

By design, the religious laws of kashrut are a marker of difference. They define observing Jews by what they do not consume.¹¹ As such, early scholarship understood kosher law as “iron-hard categories,” a set of universal commandments “heavily safeguarded by rules of avoidance.”¹² Yet in practice, kashrut always depended on interpretation, which in turn was tied to the natural and cultural environment of a given Jewish community. Thus, later scholarship allowed for a more nuanced interpretation of kosher foodways by exploring an array of Jewish practices across space and time, none of which perfectly fit a fixed classification of observing or denouncing kashrut.¹³ This article builds on these ideas to show how kashrut, similar to the laws that regulate Halal food, are “living and breathing traditions” best examined during changing circumstances.¹⁴ It argues that Jews in wartime Palestine decoded ancient religious taboos in accordance with their changing circumstances and perceived threats, embodied by pork and camel meat.

In the historiography of Palestine/Israel, meat appears sparingly, mostly focused on questions of kashrut, consumption, and identity.¹⁵ In the “transformative act” of eating meat, writes ethnographer Hagar Salamon, “animal flesh becomes human flesh,” a process that underscores questions of “identity, difference, and boundaries.”¹⁶ But a growing body of literature with various regional foci employs meat as a prism to explore wider economic, social, cultural, corporal, and environmental change especially related to imperialism, colonialism, and settler colonialism.¹⁷ For nineteenth and twentieth-century European settlers moving to the United States or Argentina, for example, newfound access to meat became integral to new national identities. Meat abundance did not only symbolize settler’s arrival at a utopia of plenty but was also understood as an equalizer: in the “new world” meat was no longer reserved for the wealthy. Access to meat empowered the masses.¹⁸ Yet in Palestine, European settlers did not gain more access to meat, but less. Jewish settlers’ changing circumstances were perceived through a lens of scarcity rather than abundance, and religious sensitivities surrounding meat – as a marker of difference – were infused with the settler-colonial experience.¹⁹

The transition from Europe to Palestine fundamentally altered the ecological, economic, political, cultural, and social setting in which observing Jews had to reexamine the laws of kashrut, especially during wartime scarcity. In Europe, for centuries, pork symbolized the irreconcilable distinction between Jewish minorities and the Christian majorities among which they lived. By avoiding pigs and pork, Jews were denied of fully participating in European societies.²⁰ Moving to Palestine, where pig husbandry was marginal, shifted some of the focus off pork and onto a new divider: camel meat. Jewish administrators and religious authorities perceived both pork and camel as dangerous, but that danger was of a different nature. The perceived perils of pork were imported to Palestine and reinterpreted to represent tensions within the Jewish community between traditional and secular values. Jews who sold and consumed pork in Palestine were often depicted as an enemy from within. The fear of camel meat, however, reflected anxieties over a newfound and forced intimacy with neighboring Arabs and Palestinians. Camel controversies and pork politics illuminate a moment of transition for Jews, from a religious minority in Europe to a settler minority in the Middle East.²¹

Camel Controversies: Camel Colonialism

Almost synonymous with the desert, few animals are as representative of the Middle East as are camels. Known for their resilience in arid regions, camels can live in particularly hot and dry climates by efficiently extracting hydration and nutrients from poor and highly cellulose vegetation that would not suit other mammals.²² Across the Middle East, Bedouins were the main breeders of camels, and peasants occasionally used camels as draught animals. In Palestine, raising camels was mostly limited to the Beersheba district in the southern part of the country. Female camels were especially treasured as they provided labor, transportation, precious provisions (such as milk, meat, hair), and notably – offspring.²³ Travelers, traders, settlers, and soldiers also used camels as pack animals that could carry heavy loads across long waterless distances.²⁴ Even urban dwellers counted on camels. In Jaffa, camels carried orange crates destined for export from the city’s groves to its port. Back from port to city, the animals returned with various goods, tourists, and immigrants on their backs.²⁵

Colonial policies and evolving technologies of transportation shifted the role of camels in the region. While British authorities promoted the removal of camels (and Bedouins) from Palestine’s landscapes, British bureaucrats were aware of the animal’s position in the region’s economic ecosystem. One official, for example, cautioned against his colleague’s “lack of sympathy” when the latter decided to limit the movement of grazing camels. He warned: “an Arab will go a long way actually and metaphysically to save the life of his camel.”²⁶

As of the late Ottoman period, camels were slowly being replaced by the motorcar and the railway, though economic resources, availability, and terrain meant that the animals often continued to function side-by-side the newer transport technologies.²⁷ During the early years of the Egyptian railway, camel transportation increased. Camels delivered supplies essential for the functioning of trains and transferred goods and people to destinations the tracks could not reach. As historian On Barak writes: “Egyptian trains could not move without camels.”²⁸ Camels gained further importance during World War II when other forms of transportation were limited or mobilized for the war effort. The increased import of camels to Palestine during the war years was not simply to feed meat-hungry consumers but also to feed the need for transportation.²⁹

Although the camel complemented the motor and the rail, the animal was often imagined as an Eastern relic. Scholar Penny Johnson uses the term “camel orientalism” to describe how British architects incorporated images of Arabs riding camels in their sketches to convey an “oriental feel” to them.³⁰ Yet “camel orientalism” assigned camels dual meaning. The camel’s relaxed pace was juxtapositioned with the swifter motorcar and train, as if the animal itself was slowing down the wheels of progress. The importance of camels in the region was even considered one as one of the factors hindering the adoption of Western technologies in the Middle East.³¹ Yet for the same reason, camels were also romanticized. Substituting camels with trains, as one British tourist wrote, would put an end to “the excitement and wonder of a journey in the desert.”³²

Jewish settlers in Palestine employed their own version of “camel orientalism,” yet theirs involved another form of transportation: flying. In 1932, Tel Aviv’s Trade and Industry Company initiated the Levant Fair, alongside its memorable commercial logo: the flying camel.³³ The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, among them many businessmen and industrialists, created a hub of economic activity in 1930s Tel Aviv. This activity was vital for the expansion of the Jewish settlement in Palestine (the Yishuv). The Levant fair displayed Palestine’s economic development, emphasizing advancements in industry, agriculture, trade, transport, finance, and food production.³⁴ It also sponsored cultural events, sports, and leisure.³⁵ The fair’s architect, Arieh Elhanani, created a special commercial figurine to personify and promote the event: a fictional camel flapping its wings as if to take off into the sky(Figure 1). Tel Aviv’s mayor Meir Dizengoff described the vision as it appeared to those arriving at the Fair by sea:

From the deck of the ship … one sees afar off … a white column crowned by a flying camel … Its aspiring head and form symbolize the East, resurrected after long centuries by the youth and energy of those returning to their motherland. As if in a fairytale, the Eastern camel has sprouted the wings of a bird and soars aloft to embrace wider horizons.³⁶

The image of the flying camel became instantly iconic.³⁷ The local Jewish press enthusiastically adopted it as a metaphor for Palestine, ascending into the future due to the dynamism of Jewish settlers.³⁸ Elhanai’s creation resonated with Jewish audiences because it articulated a belief that was central to Zionism: Palestine needed development, and European Jewish settlers had the knowledge and vigor to develop it. British officials often shared this belief.³⁹ But the “flying camel” was not simply a Zionist symbol; it was an urban-Zionist symbol. What Dizengoff described as the “resurrection” of Palestine was achieved not by the idealized Jewish “pioneers” of the kibbutz but by Tel Aviv’s industrialists and businessmen. The achievements of urban Jewish settlers are often belittled in Zionist accounts, but the fair’s “flying camel” put them center stage as propelling Palestine toward “wider horizons.”⁴⁰

Tel Aviv was home to the Levant Fair and the “flying camel” because it was the economic and demographic powerhouse of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was also the country’s biggest market for meat. As the de facto Jewish capital of Palestine, the city’s administrators were intent on safeguarding Jewish law by defining which meats could be sold there. While administrators and settlers celebrated a fictional camel as a symbol of national rejuvenation, consuming camels was perceived as a threat to the Jewish collective.

Consuming Camels

Palestine’s 1939 Defense Regulations defined “meat” as “the flesh of cattle, sheep, goats, swine or camels.”⁴¹ While neither locals nor settlers would have equated these different types of flesh, British provisioning policies overlooked regional preferences and religious sensitivities. For the British government, ensuring a wartime supply of any of the above fleshes would qualify as providing Palestinians with “meat.” This definition of meat also corresponded with the British government’s obligation to the League of Nations to avoid religious discrimination in Palestine. Equating meats was supposedly impartial because distinguishing between certain meats would have theoretically discriminated against the communities that produced and consumed them. Hence, in Mandate Palestine, neither the Jewish minority nor the Muslim majority had the authority to ban the sale or consumption of meats for religious reasons.⁴² Any efforts to prohibit meats due to religious sensitivities had to be conducted on a local level.

In Tel Aviv, religious sensitivities intertwined with Jewish administrators’ aspirations to gain control over the urban economy.⁴³ As early as 1926, when Tel Aviv was only a Jewish neighborhood within Jaffa, Tel Aviv’s local council tried to limit camel meat in its vicinity.⁴⁴ In 1931, when Tel Aviv erected a separate slaughterhouse to that of Jaffa’s, only kosher animals were slaughtered there, a category which included cattle, sheep, and goats, but excluded pigs and camels. Yet even after 1936, when Tel Aviv officially separated from Jaffa and became a municipality in its own right, Tel Aviv’s administrators had little control over the city’s market for meat. With no hard border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the two towns essentially shared a joint meat economy where animals slaughtered and sold in Jaffa were often consumed in Tel Aviv. With various butcher shops operating in the neighborhoods of in-between the cities, Tel Aviv’s administrators pointed to this area as the weak link through which non-kosher meats penetrated “the Hebrew city.”⁴⁵

Jews who chose to consume camel meat depended on Palestinian and regional producers. In Palestine, as in the region, camel meat was generally “unregulated.” Most camels moving across the region were led by breeders through unfettered desert trails. Once in place or still on the go, breeders carried out most slaughter themselves – typically only once the animals reached old age – in various locations rather than in authorized slaughterhouses.⁴⁶ Some camels, however, were sold to butchers and slaughtered officially in Palestine’s slaughterhouses. For example, in the 1940s, Palestinian licensed butcher Husni Radwan Mahmoud Hamdan of Wadi Hunein in the Ramle District slaughtered camels at the Lydda Slaughterhouse and supplied their meat to Jewish customers in kibbutzim in the area as well as restaurants in the Jewish settlements of Rishon-le-Zion and Rehovot. The butcher needed special authorization to do so since British veterinary regulations assigned each district one slaughterhouse and prohibited the transfer of meat between districts. The butcher’s relationship with his Jewish clientele was significant enough to generate multiple correspondences between him and British officials on the matter.⁴⁷

In addition to the existence and extent of Jewish camel consumption, the butcher’s relationship with his Jewish clientele illustrates how despite tensions and bouts of intercommunal violence, Palestinians and Jews maintained economic ties throughout the Mandate period.⁴⁸ Ties between camel butchers and Jewish consumers also demonstrate how consuming camel meat required not only transgressing the religious taboos of kashrut but also crossing national lines by purchasing from Palestinian butchers in Arab-majority or mixed towns.⁴⁹

During World War II, the number of butcher shops operating on the borderline between Arab-majority Jaffa and Jewish-majority Tel Aviv more than doubled. Some of these shops were jointly owned by Palestinian and Jewish butchers and catered to both Palestinian and Jewish clientele. Approximately a third of these new shops officially registered as vendors of pork and camel. Any meat sold in Jaffa was significantly more affordable compared to Tel Aviv; beef was up to 40% cheaper, and camel meat was about half the price of beef.⁵⁰ Hence, Tel Aviv’s consumers often purchased meat in neighboring Jaffa. But just as consumers could easily cross into Jaffa to purchase meat, so could Tel Aviv’s meat vendors. According to Tel Aviv’s municipal meat inspector, some vendors traveled to Jaffa daily, or even multiple times a day, to purchase meat there and resell it in Tel Aviv for a premium. The Tel Aviv municipality considered these vendors “meat smugglers” and was determined to stop them.

It is difficult to assess how much meat was “smuggled” between Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Officials claimed that much of this meat was served in restaurants because restaurateurs relied on having meat delivered to them, and because once cooked, few customers distinguished between various types of red meat.⁵¹ What is clear is that the booming inter-urban (camel) meat trade hurt Tel Aviv’s established meat industry and its stakeholders. The traffic was detrimental to the income and influence of the municipality and local rabbinate, as both relied on taxes collected at the Tel Aviv slaughterhouse. It also meant less employment for Tel Aviv’s slaughterhouse workers and kosher butchers as they were forced to compete against non-kosher butchers who sold cheaper meats. The camel meat trade also allowed more “outsiders” into the meat business: it offered newcomers an immediate source of income, and butcher apprentices a way to bypass the saturated beef business by venturing off on their own selling camel.⁵² By fighting against non-kosher vendors, Tel Aviv was not only trying to enforce religious taboos but also safeguard its urban economy.

In addition to crafty meat vendors and fluid urban boundaries, Tel Aviv’s urban economy was challenged by the British government which directly and indirectly encouraged wartime camel consumption.⁵³ Palestine depended on livestock imports for most of its meat. With the advent of war, Palestine’s Food Controller restricted the import of cattle and sheep to military authorities but left the import of pigs and camels permitted to civilians under an import license. The Food Controller also left camel meat (and pork) unrationed well after other meats were strictly controlled. Both measures indirectly stimulated the camel and pig trade. To the dismay of some Jews, the government also directly encouraged camel consumption. When the Food Controller answered complaints about mounting meat shortages by suggesting that people in Palestine “eat more camels,” the religious Jewish press ridiculed the official for his ignorance and reminded its readers that camels were not kosher.⁵⁴

As the visibility of camel meat in Tel Aviv increased, Jewish representatives became more nervous. Tel Aviv’s mayor Israel Rokach asked the British District Commissioner to enact various restrictions on the sale of camel meat in Jaffa and Tel Aviv. These restrictions included obliging the chief veterinarian at the Jaffa slaughterhouse to stamp camel meat with a uniquely shaped and tinted stamp as well as requiring meat vendors to display a sign with an image of a camel head in their stores. Rokach suggested that police forces could ensure these rules were abided by. Yet in addition to actively encouraging camel trade, British authorities also refused to intervene in local matters such as Tel Aviv’s perceived “meat smuggling” problem. The District Commissioner refused to enforce local restrictions on camel meat and asked to remind Rokach that a wartime police force was better utilized for more urgent missions.⁵⁵

Unwavering, Rokach tried to appeal to the Commissioner’s British sensibilities by connecting between the Jewish disdain for camel meat and the English contempt for horsemeat. In a letter to the District Commissioner, Rokach cited the British Sale of Horseflesh Act from 1889, emphasizing that it included not only horseflesh but also the flesh of asses and mules, “i.e. beasts of burden,” Rokach wrote, “a class which clearly includes the camel.” “Were the camel common in England,” Rokach continued, “the Act would have covered it as well.”⁵⁶ By asking the District Commissioner to equate equines with camelids, Rokach was encouraging the Commissioner to associate European Jews with Britons. But unfortunately for Rokach, what he described as “meat smuggling,” the Commissioner believed to be the workings of a free market. According to the Commissioner, the citizens of Tel Aviv purchased “very large quantities of meat” in Jaffa “for reasons of economy,” and that was “perfectly legal.”⁵⁷ When Rokach continued to insist, the Commissioner offered his final thoughts on the matter. “The problem is twofold,” wrote the Commissioner, “religious and economic. And no legislative measure will ever compel people to observe religious taboos which they do not accept voluntarily or prevent people from buying in the cheapest market.”⁵⁸

With no support from the government, the Tel Aviv municipality found a creative way to target vendors: “meat trials.” As camels were not slaughtered in Tel Aviv, any camel meat found in the city was necessarily brought in from the outside and was thusly illegal under the division of Palestine into “slaughterhouse districts.” Whether Tel Aviv and Jaffa officially counted as separate “slaughterhouse districts” is debatable, but using this as a legal loophole, the city was able to criminalize non-kosher meat within its boundaries. The Tel Aviv municipality used its veterinarians and sanitary inspectors to catch and testify against meat offenders. Culprits were both men and women who were tried in municipal court.⁵⁹ They were charged either with the illegal movement of meat, or, especially in the case of camel meat, with fraud because consumers could claim that they were unaware of the true origins of the meat they purchased.⁶⁰

“Meat trials,” as dubbed by the Jewish press, became a daily affair in Tel Aviv. In 1941, in the five months between April and September alone, the municipal courts hosted fifty such trials.⁶¹ The press regularly reported about the trials and gave special attention to describing the dangers of disguised camel meat. Whether affiliated with a religious or secular readership, Jewish newspapers stirred up anxieties, suggesting that the danger loomed everywhere, at a butcher’s shop or in a restaurant. Historically, and far beyond Tel Aviv, the mysterious origins of meat often raised concerns over hygiene, wholesomeness, and indeed, trust.⁶² But for observing Jews, the origins of meat were especially worrisome. If a butcher in Palestine sold mutton to a Jewish customer under the guise that it was beef, that would be illegal because sheep’s meat was cheaper than beef. It was, however, still derived from a kosher animal. Selling camel meat disguised as beef meant not only deceiving a customer but also compromising the purity of his or her body and soul. This danger was ubiquitous, the Jewish press pushed, as even court-appointed experts tasked with inspecting confiscated meats could not always differentiate between camel and beef.⁶³

During “meat trials,” retailers who intentionally deceived customers were especially reprimanded because of their perceived threat to Jewish society. In 1939, Judge Rosenzweig stated that “in Tel Aviv meat means beef … and beef does not include camel meat … a customer who asks for meat means beef and should receive beef.” Anyone selling anything else, the Judge emphasized, would be tried by the court for the highly punishable crime of fraud.⁶⁴ After a long day of “meat trials” the press reported on the following sentences: Sa’adia Shar’abi, a Yemenite Jew caught with a piece of goat meat without a Tel Aviv slaughterhouse stamp was sentenced to a week in jail. In comparison, another Jewish man, named Leshenski, was caught in possession of two pieces of camel meat and was sentenced to an entire month in jail. Likewise, Edith Feinberg, a German-Jewess who sold eighteen pieces of camel meat to customers was sentenced to three weeks in jail, and Leib Duker, who sold camel meat at his butcher shop was sentenced to two months in jail with no bail. The names and addresses of the vendors were published in the press to shame them and warn Jewish clientele.⁶⁵

Both Jewish and Palestinian retailers stood trial for meat infractions in Tel Aviv, and the press would especially emphasize when Jews and Palestinians worked together to deceive Jewish customers.⁶⁶ Even during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jews and Palestinians stood trial for plotting together to illegally slaughter camels and sell them to Tel Aviv’s Jewish consumers.⁶⁷ Palestinian butchers, especially from Jaffa or surrounding villages such as Sumail, were described as engaging in the most licentious meat trafficking such as knowingly slaughtering sick camels or butchering already dead camels before transferring their meat to the Jews of Tel Aviv.⁶⁸ For example, during the trial of butchers Haj Mohamad and Abed Hamid Nazim, a Jewish veterinarian described the “horrible things occurring in the Tel Aviv meat trade.” He claimed to know the defendants well, as they and “a few other Arab butchers routinely buy ill animals to slaughter in the fields around the Yarkon river.”⁶⁹ The seedy details served to heighten anxieties regarding purchasing camel meat, or any type of meat, from Palestinian butchers. “Anyone who hears the details of these trials,” stated one Jewish Judge, “cannot taste meat for months.”⁷⁰

The fear of camel meat entangled religious and economic concerns. It also encapsulated a shift in Jewish history. Historically, pork has been “the most taboo food in Jewish culture.”⁷¹ Yet in Palestine, Jews were no longer a pork-avoiding minority among European Christians, but a camel-avoiding settler society among Palestine’s Arabs. By boasting headlines such as “Pig Meat and Camel Meat in Restaurants” and “Tel Aviv Gorged on Camel and ‘Abomination’ Meat,” Palestine’s Jewish press bestowed upon camel meat a historical role reserved for pork.⁷² Nevertheless, one distinction was clear. For Tel Aviv’s religious authorities, camel meat presented a threat from the outside while pork embodied a threat to Jews from within.

Pork Politics: “The Land of Pigs”

While camels are often associated with the climates and landscapes of the Middle East, pigs might seem misplaced in these environments. Considered maladaptive to high temperatures, direct sunlight, and in constant need of hydration, scholars have long claimed that the origins of the religious ban on pork were rooted in environmental concerns.⁷³ Recent scholarship has debunked these theories, emphasizing that pig husbandry has historically adapted to various climates. Deep snow, rather than warm climates, was its only real hurdle.⁷⁴ Indeed, while most camels slaughtered in Palestine in the 1940s were imported from the broader region (namely Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, and Sudan) most pigs were born and raised in Palestine.⁷⁵

Pig-breeding in Palestine predated British rule, but as elsewhere in the region was limited to missionaries and Christian minorities.⁷⁶ Palestinians bred pigs for meat in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Beit Safafa, Ein Karem, and Ramallah. In the north, pigs were also bred in Bassa, Acre, and Haifa, and in the south – in Gaza.⁷⁷ Keen on developing animal husbandry in Palestine, the British government’s Agricultural Department initiated various programs to intensify breeding and improve local breeds. For the British, encouraging European livestock-based agriculture was considered essential for economic development.⁷⁸ The Agricultural Department maintained a government stock farm in Acre which offered stud services as well as the loan or purchase of livestock, including cattle, horses, donkeys, sheep, goats, and pigs (but no camels). The farm generally held favorable breeds of local or acclimatized species such as Beiruti cattle instead of the local Palestinian Baladi. It also held European breeds such as British or Irish cattle. As for swine, the farm held Large White and Middle White pigs, species which originated in Yorkshire and were crossbred over decades to produce quality meat.⁷⁹ A British Livestock Survey from the 1940s credited these efforts for promoting the “great increase in pig breeding amongst the Christian Arab population.”⁸⁰

The greatest increase in pig breeding occurred during the war. World War I devastated the local population, and like in other parts of the region, famine was widespread.⁸¹ When World War II came, Palestinians still remembered the despair and deprivation caused by total war. Economic hardship pushed them to search for new avenues of income.⁸² At the same time, the price of livestock soared, and shortages in other meats meant that demand for pork was unusually high.⁸³ This created new opportunities for Palestinian breeders.⁸⁴ For one, a growing presence of foreign personnel, for whom pork was a dietary staple, increased demand for pork.⁸⁵ More importantly, Palestine’s colonial government played an active role in creating a booming pig market. As the country relied on imports for many of its foods, and international trade was restricted and unpredictable due to the war, the Director of Agriculture Production and the Food Controller called on local farmers to increase the production of all agricultural produce and livestock. To encourage production, the government distributed local bran to pig farmers and left imported bran uncontrolled to allow breeders to purchase more of it. This is when, according to the testimony of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, a Christian chronicler from Jerusalem, Palestine became “the land of pigs.”⁸⁶

The government distributed fodder to anyone interested in pig farming. The records of the Executive Committee of Swine Breeders in Palestine indicate that “very many” new pig farms were created to answer the government’s call.⁸⁷ According to Jawhariyyeh, this was an understatement. There was not a farm, a stable, or even an empty basement in and around Jerusalem “that did not breed pigs of some kind,” he wrote. Within the logic of livestock economies, female pigs were especially valued for their ability to provide offspring.⁸⁸ According to Jawhariyyeh, “the price of a she-pig exceeded one thousand Palestinian pounds,” a sum which according to him was “a fortune that could buy a house.”⁸⁹ The frenzy was not limited to the Jerusalem area, and not limited to live pigs either. The price of pork meat soared across the country. In Bassa in Northern Palestine, resident Marie Shammas recalled:

not many civil jobs [were] available at the time. But having stalls in the market for meat was a big thing … Even pigs. I will never forget the rows of pigs that would sell for 100 Palestinian pounds! If you had a pig you could make hundreds of lira and the lira back then was like the sterling pound … ⁹⁰

Shammas’ recollection indicates that even within Christian communities, the war was a unique period for the visibility of pork and pork vendors. But Palestine’s lucrative market for pigs and pork did not last long. What might have been regarded by the government as agricultural development turned out to be, in the words of Jawhariyyeh, a farce.⁹¹ In July 1943, a few months after British authorities began supplying breeders with bran, a sudden “no bran for pigs” policy came into effect. Instead, all bran was reserved for cattle, though not typically bovine food in Palestine. The government suggested that pig breeders sustain their pigs on swill – a mixture of kitchen scraps and liquids.⁹² Raising pigs on swill was customary in Britain, but not in wartime Palestine. The Executive Committee of Swine Breeders informed the government that no household in Jerusalem produced enough food waste to feed pigs. If that was the case, one government official replied, breeders should not have raised pigs in the first place.⁹³ This disregard infuriated Palestinian leaders, like Shibli Jamal of the Arab Chamber of Commerce, who accused the Food Controller of being oblivious to local conditions: “what Arab household in Palestine has swill to feed pigs on? When it has barely sufficient food to feed itself!”⁹⁴

As a result of British policy, pig breeders were facing crushing financial losses. The breeders claimed that their situation was becoming “darker and worse” as they were forced to let Palestine’s 25,000–30,000 pig population starve or slaughter them prematurely. The breeders reminded the government that the pig industry was essential to relieve some of the demand for beef and mutton. They wanted the government to repeal all laws controlling fodder and livestock but alternatively suggested that the government could either return to supply fodder, allow its import from Egypt, or even buy all pigs from their owners to curb their losses.⁹⁵ Initially signaling economic opportunity, pig breeding quickly became associated with desperation. As Jawhariyyeh wrote: “pig farming and trading became … a contagious disease that hit hundreds of well-known families. Some of them made some profit initially … but in the end they were bankrupt … ”⁹⁶

Allegedly, the Food Controller’s change in policy was motivated by the idea that the country needed more cow’s milk than pork meat. With virtually all dairy farming in the hands of the Jewish sector, this raised questions among members of the Executive Committee of Swine Breeders as to the government’s alliances.⁹⁷ In a petition, the Executive Committee wrote to the High Commissioner of Palestine that they were being severely prejudiced against. There was no justification, they claimed, to discriminate between cattle and swine by supplying all fodder to the former leaving nothing for the latter. Since all swine breeders in the country were Christian Arabs and all dairy farmers were Jewish, the Executive Committee claimed that discriminating between cattle and swine was equal to discriminating between Arab and Jew. They also argued that British discrimination was a result of favoritism, due to the influence of “a Jewish meat expert” in the Food Controller’s department who managed to sway decisions in favor of Zionist businesses such as the omnipresent cooperative Tnuva.⁹⁸ Shibli Jamal also implied that Jewish dairy farmers did not need all the bran they received, as copious amounts leaked to the black market where it was sold for overinflated prices.⁹⁹

British policies deepened the economic competition between Zionist and Palestinian industries and revealed a conflict between the needs (and expectations) of locals and British regional interests. Just one day after the Palestinian pig breeders sent their petition to the High Commissioner, the government served them with another crushing blow by lifting the ban on the importation of pigs from French-controlled Syria and Lebanon. An unknown author wrote to the Food Controller: “it is amazing that the government should import swine from outside Palestine when at the same time it is ruining thousands of its own citizens.”¹⁰⁰ The writer clearly thought that the colonial government was responsible for, and accountable to, Palestinians as imperial citizens. Yet the government was not as concerned with its immediate subjects as it was with the regional economic interests of the allied forces.¹⁰¹

In addition to questions of governmental accountability, the unknown author also questioned the decision to import pigs from Syria instead of fodder since pigs take double the space as bran.¹⁰² Yet according to the Food Controller, the ban on Syrian and Lebanese pigs had nothing to do with such considerations, or even with protecting the local Palestinian industry, it was previously instated due to the presence of Swine Fever in those territories.¹⁰³ With the eradication of the epidemic, foreign swine were again welcome in Palestine. As a result of shifting British provisioning politics, Palestinian pig breeders were forced to compete not only with the local Jewish dairy industry but also with extra-imperial pig breeders.

Palestinian breeders could not rely on British personnel as clientele either, because the army had its own resources. The government imported various quantities of frozen meat, ham, bacon, and other pork products from across the British Empire and its allies.¹⁰⁴ Army personnel were also said to “grow their own bacon” in army camps and veterinary hospitals, where pigs had to be guarded by dogs due to their value.¹⁰⁵ Any leftover swill amassed from army rations was never sold to Palestinian breeders but transferred to British contractors, most notably – the food retailer Spinney’s.¹⁰⁶ Initially a military supplier, Spinney’s quickly expanded into the Palestinian civilian market with stores in Haifa, Acre, Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Tel Aviv. Palestine’s pig breeders faced economic ruin.

“Pig!”

Pork production in Palestine was mainly limited to the Christian sector. Very few Jews or Muslims seem to have been involved in pig breeding, but some were, and even did so in partnership.¹⁰⁷ While not very active in pork production, some Jews in Palestine openly engaged in its consumption.¹⁰⁸ According to the Executive Committee of Swine Breeders in Palestine, their customers included “a great section of the Christian and Jewish communities in this country” to whom they supplied fresh pork, ham, bacon, and sausage.¹⁰⁹ Jews also purchased local and imported pork products at Spinney’s.¹¹⁰ In addition, some Jewish-owned restaurants and shops publicly served pork. Even at the aforementioned Levant Fair, a quintessential Jewish-national celebration, ham and eggs were featured in full view on a cafeteria menu.¹¹¹

Jewish pork consumption in Palestine agitated the Rabbinate and its supporters among the press and public. But what was truly inconceivable for them was that Jews were openly selling pork in the holy land. Beyond the religious taboo, pork polemics took on urban-national dimensions. Like camel meat, there were no legal grounds to penalize the sale of pork under British law in Tel Aviv or elsewhere in the country. All Tel Aviv’s administrators could do was to try and charge pork vendors for selling meat that was slaughtered outside the Tel Aviv slaughterhouse, but these attempts were not always successful.¹¹² Thus, alongside the legal route – the “meat trials” described above regarding camel meat – the city’s authorities pursued additional measures to impede the sale of pork, including public shaming, picketing, and boycotting.

The Tel Aviv Rabbinate published lists of butcher shops, restaurants, food stores, pensions, and other establishments that served pork, and called to boycott them. The rabbinate also organized protests outside these establishments and regularly recruited supporters to picket outside pork vendors’ shops.¹¹³ These methods were somewhat effective, at least temporarily, bringing several retailers into negotiations with the rabbinate, including Spinney’s.¹¹⁴ Yet some Jewish retailers seemed especially insistent on their right to sell pork. This, despite the rabbinates’ constant badgering and petitions signed by various individuals and associations who claimed that the sale of pork in Tel Aviv was immoral and hurtful.¹¹⁵ One retailer frequently mentioned in the sources was the German-Jewish Max Cohen who was targeted by the Rabbinate and its supporters repeatedly.¹¹⁶

Cohen’s German origin was often emphasized in protests against him, as it was for other German Jews who sold German goods in 1930s Palestine.¹¹⁷ Associating Germans with pork was not entirely unjustified. In Germany during this period, pigs supplied two-thirds of the overall population’s meat intake and a third of their fat intake.¹¹⁸ Such high proportions suggest that at least some non-observing Jews in Germany consumed pork as well. Yet ironically, in World War II Palestine, German-Jewish pork consumers and retailers were often linked to Nazi Germany, the same country they were forced to flee.

Signs posted outside the Max Cohen shop on a popular road in Tel Aviv warned the Jewish public that German products were sold there.¹¹⁹ In accordance, a crowd of protesters gathered calling out: “Boo Hitler!,” “Boo Max Cohen!,” “Pig!”¹²⁰ German-Jewish consumers were targeted as well. When two German-Jewish women left the non-kosher “Rivoli” shop, protestors yelled at the women “Onwards to Germany!” The frightened women took shelter in a nearby café, and the owner of the store called the police to disperse the crowd.¹²¹ Picketers were not alone in singling out German-Jews. One Jewish judge was puzzled by the idea that a Jewish restaurateur, standing trial in Tel Aviv, insisted on serving pork dishes to his customers despite his day in court. This propelled the judge to ask the restaurateur a rhetorical question: “[did] you come here from Germany [just] to sell pork?”¹²²

For Jewish administrators with some political power in Tel Aviv, being Jewish and consuming pork were mutually exclusive. They measured the Jewishness of the city against the (in)visibility of pork there. Religious and political leaders also associated Tel Aviv’s perceived pork problem with Jewish persecution in Europe.¹²³ As one religious authority wrote, “In our all-Jewish city … to blatantly and proudly renounce the strict prohibition on consuming and trading in pig meat” was unbearable, especially at a time “when thousands of our brothers and sisters are slaughtered.” The religious authority insisted that any resident of Tel Aviv who had “a Jewish heart beating in his chest” and “who aches in Jewish agony” must agree that the sale of pork in Tel Aviv was disgraceful.¹²⁴

Not all Jewish settlers agreed that Jewishness was inherently incompatible with pork consumption. One sausage maker put an ad in the press wishing his customers a “Happy Kosher Year” ahead of the Jewish new year. He did not detect the irony in promoting his pork sausages and wishing the public a kosher new year in the same ad. In addition, Jewish pork vendors often claimed that they sold pork because Jewish customers demanded it.¹²⁵ The idea that some Jews chose to consume pork was also lightheartedly illustrated in the press, with one reporter noting that those who wanted to know where to purchase pork could simply follow the protestors.¹²⁶ Others, still, did not take the picketing and boycotting lightly. One commentator, possibly a German-Jew himself, wrote a long article on the matter. Targeting and boycotting Jewish business was all too similar, he claimed, to what he had experienced just recently before fleeing Europe. The fact that in Palestine, which was for him a place of refuge, Jews incited against Jews was a true tragedy.¹²⁷

Though pig breeders in Palestine were mainly Christians, consuming pork did not raise the same anxieties about intermingling with Palestine’s Christian community as camel consumption did regarding a newfound forced intimacy with Palestine’s Arabs. Tel Aviv’s pork polemics were internal. They highlighted an intrinsic heterogeneity among Jewish settlers who differed in many ways, including creed. If camel meat marked the boundaries of the Jewish city by separating settlers from their surroundings, Tel Aviv’s pork shops were enclaves of internal Jewish otherness, threatening collective cohesion defined by consumption.

Conclusions

Wartime governments sought to control consumption through provisioning policies. They did so to maintain wartime economies and meet the population’s most basic nutritional needs, while also cultivating a sense of order and collectivism in times of turmoil. Yet even when designed with agricultural development in mind, colonial policies often resulted in the opposite outcome. Colonial disregard for local realities left communities such as Palestinian pig breeders struggling to survive, questioning the government’s competence and their own precarious position within the empire.

Beyond agricultural development, animal husbandry illuminates the evocative relationship between humans and the animals they rear. Because livestock have historically served as “symbols and metaphors through which people understood difference among humans,” livestock focused policies uncovered disparities between human communities.¹²⁸ When the mayor of Tel Aviv asked the District Commissioner to equate equines with camelids, he was suggesting that the Commissioner associate Britons with Jews. And when the Food Controller discriminated between cattle and swine, Palestinian breeders experienced his decisions as discrimination between Jews and Arabs.

While camels and pigs tend to represent other, almost opposite, peoples, ecologies, and agricultural economies, matters of kashrut, together with the unusual visibility of pork and camel meat in wartime Palestine, coupled the two animals in the minds of Jewish settlers. This coupling was crafted especially by the Jewish press by boasting headlines such as “Pig Meat and Camel Meat in Restaurants,” singling out these two types of meat and pairing between them. Despite this coupling, and though both meats were equally non-kosher, the process of transforming pigs and camels into meat differed, and so were the meanings assigned to these meats.

In Europe, pork symbolized the irreconcilable distinction between Jewish minorities and the Christian majorities among which they lived. No other food was as threatening to Jewish collective identity as was pork. Yet the nuances of kashrut shifted with the changing realities of wartime Jews. Coming to Palestine reshaped the pork question into a battleground among Jewish settlers themselves. Rather than an external other, the pork problem exposed the Jewish other who was unwilling to abide by religious-national dogma. Pork epitomized a quintessential struggle over the collective character of the Jewish settlement in Palestine: will it follow secular or traditional Jewish values? This question persists in Israel today.

In addition to religious difference, Jewish national identity in wartime Palestine was hinged on the settler-colonial experience. Tel Aviv and Jaffa’s shared infrastructures and commercial ties meant that the towns’ meat economies were inseparable. The fear of camel meat extended beyond an aversion to non-kosher meat. Anxiety over disguised camel meat highlighted Jewish settlers’ alienation from their new surroundings: the people, environment, and economy of Palestine as well as the animals it had to offer. Beyond the interweaving of religious and economic concerns, the fear of camel flesh penetrating Tel Aviv’s meat systems served to further isolate Jewish settlers from neighboring Palestinian cities and villages. And symbolically, as emblems of the Arab East, consuming camels meant ingesting an alien – even enemy – animal into Jewish bodies and the Jewish body politic.

Figure 1. “The Flying Camel” by Arieh Elhanani in Plumer Square, Levant Fair, Tel Aviv, circa 1930s. Source: Wikipedia.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Imperial Foodways conference hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Modernising Landscapes Annual Pierre du Bois Workshop. For their comments and suggestions at various stages, I would like to thank Emily Brownell, Christopher Otter, Nadja Durbach, Sherene Seikaly, René Bloch, and especially Erika Rappaport who helped me strengthen this text considerably. I would also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers of GFH for their valuable support and detailed feedback. I am indebted to the Swiss National Science Foundation for funding much of the research conducted for this article, and the Geneva Graduate Institute for allowing me to make it widely available through open access publishing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Efrat Gilad

Efrat Gilad is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Bern. She completed a Ph.D. in International History at the Geneva Graduate Institute, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Doc.CH grant. Her research and teaching interests include the intertwined histories of food, animals, agriculture, and the environment. She is currently writing a book about the history of meat production and consumption in British Mandate Palestine.

Notes

1. See Bentley, Eating for Victory; Davis, Home Fires Burning; Collingham, The Taste of War; Pilcher, Food in World History, 103–11; Duffett, The Stomach for Fighting; Durbach, Many Mouths.

2. For British-centered histories of each, see Woods, The Herds Shot Round the World; Haushofer, “Darby’s Fluid Meat.”

3. Seikaly, Men of Capital, 77.

4. See Vickers, A Nutritional Economic Survey; Seikaly, “Bodies and Needs”; Nadan, The Palestinian Peasant Economy; Hauser, “A Frugal Crescent,” 301-302.

5. El-Eini, Mandated landscape, 121; Nadan, The Palestinian Peasant Economy, 106-107.

6. Ben-Nathan, “The Meat Question in Tel Aviv.”

7. Durbach, Many Mouths.

8. Spring, “World War II Food Rationing.”

9. For more on this Seikaly, Men of Capital.

10. Pig slaughter increased gradually, from about 750 pigs at the eve of war to just over 3,500 in 1942. Official figures for camel slaughter averaged around 600 prior to the war, grew to over 1,000 in 1939, tripled to approximately 3,700 in 1941 and soared to 11,000 in 1942. BNA, FO 922/72, Gillespie, Livestock Survey.

11. Rosenblum, “Why do you Refuse Pork?”

12. Douglas, Purity and Danger.

13. Siporin, “From Kashrut to Cucina Ebraica”; Bahloul, “On Cabbages and Kings”; Diner, Hungering for America, 185; Miller, “Identity Takeout”; Shternshis, “Salo on Challah.”

14. Armanios and Ergene, Halal Food, 60.

15. For animal husbandry, see Nadan, The Palestinian Peasant Economy; El-Eini, Mandated Landscape. For meat, Helman, “European Jews in Levant Heat”; Rozin, “Craving Meat”; Igra, “Mandate of Compassion”; Igra, “Kosher Life.”

16. Salamon, “Misplaced Home and Mislaid Meat,” 170.

17. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis; Fischer, Cattle Colonialism; Specht, Red Meat Republic; Woods, Herds Shot Round the World; Otter, Diet for a Large Planet.

18. Diner, Hungering for America; Zanoni, Migrant Marketplaces.

19. This article focuses chiefly on Jewish responses to the rising visibility of pork and camel meat. Camel was not a favored meat for most Palestinians, but because it is Halal, rising camel consumption did not seem to raise the same anxious responses from Muslim Palestinians as it did from observing Jews. Regrading pig meat, which is neither kosher nor Halal, its growing wartime visibility was smaller compared to camel meat, and more importantly – based on the archival materials that were available to me – limited to the Christian and Jewish section of Palestine. Thus, it seems, rising pork trade did not raise similar anxious response from Palestine’s Muslim majority as it did from Jewish settlers.

20. Stallybrass and White, Politics and Poetics of Transgression.

21. This paper is based on a diverse collection of British, Palestinian, and Jewish sources. I draw from the archives of the British Government in Palestine and the imperial Foreign Office; the Arab Chamber of Commerce and the testimonies of local Palestinians; correspondences between various Zionist actors, and Palestine’s Jewish press.

22. Al-Rawashdeh et al., “A Survey of Camel”; Inal, “One-Humped History,” 3.

23. Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, 77–78, 122; Inal, “One-Humped History,” 4.

24. BNA, FO 922/72, Gillespie, The Baggage Camel.

25. Johnson, “Take My Camel,” 35–39. In the mid 19th century, settlers introduced Arabian camels to the United States and Australia, but the animals quickly became seen as a nuisance. See Ritvo, “Going Forth and Multiplying.”

26. As quoted in El-Eini, Mandated Landscape, 225.

27. Johnson, “Take My Camel,” 38–39; Barak, On Time, 34–39.

28. Barak, On Time, 37.

29. Gillespie, Livestock Survey.

30. Johnson, “Take my Camel,” 30.

31. See Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel; Pétriat, The Uneven Age of Speed.

32. As quoted in Barak, On time, 35.

33. The Levant fair was an exhibition in the spirit of the World Fairs of London, Paris, and Chicago. See Helman, Young Tel Aviv, 51–55.

34. “The Flying Camel.”

35. “International Football.”

36. Dizengoff, “The Flying Camel.”

37. “The Flying Camel – Film Star”; “The Levant Fair Plan.”

38. Helman, Young Tel Aviv, 51-55. See also: Zerubavel, Desert in the Promised Land, 53.

39. Norris, Land of Progress.

40. For the concept of urban Zionism, Shoham, Carnival in Tel Aviv.

41. “Defence Regulations 1939,” 416.

42. Barak-Erez, Laws and “Other” Animals, 46. For the earlier English version of this book see: Barak-Erez, Outlawed Pigs.

43. Alma Igra claims that kosher laws allowed to create separate Jewish and Palestinian meat economies on an urban as well as a national level. See Igra, “Kosher Life.”

44. TAMA, 04-2857, “Bye Law Sale of Meat,” December 19, 1926. See also “Are Tel Aviv Citizens Fed Camel Meat?”; “Veterinary.”

45. TAMA, 04-2857, Chelouche to Rokach, May 8, 1942. For more on the zone of in-between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, see: Bernstein, “South of Tel-Aviv”; Karlinsky, “Jaffa and Tel-Aviv before 1948”; Aleksandrowicz, “Paper Boundaries.”

46. Gillespie, Livestock Survey.

47. See correspondences between November 19 and December 7, 1945, in ISA, M-1789/21, “Veterinary Service: Movement of Meat.”

48. Sparked by the growing visibility and land acquisitions of European Jewish settlers in Palestine, the clashes of 1921, 1929, and 1936-1939 were especially violent. Yet once subsided, even these clashes were followed by intercommunal exchange. See for example Bernstein, “South of Tel-Aviv”; Karlinsky, “Jaffa and Tel-Aviv before 1948”; Tamir. “Relations between Tel Aviv and Jaffa”; Aleksandrowicz, “Paper Boundaries.”

49. “The Municipal Veterinary Services.”

50. TAMA, 04-2857, Levit to Nadivi, November 23, 1941.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. “3 Meatless Days”; “From Dan to Beersheba”.

54. “The Food Controller Suggests.”

55. TAMA, 04-2857, Assistant District Commissioner to Rokach, December 30. 1941; Rokach to Assistant District Commissioner, February 15, 1942; Assistant District Commissioner to Rokach, February 25, 1942, Assistant District Commissioner to Rokach, May 4, 1942.

56. TAMA, 04-2857, Rokach to District Commissioner, October 15, 1939.

57. TAMA, 04-2857, Assistant District Commissioner to Rokach, November 3, 1941.

58. TAMA, 04-2857, Assistant District Commissioner to Rokach, December 30, 1941.

59. Women did not butcher meat at the slaughterhouse but sold meat in butchers shops, restaurants and pensions they owned or ran. See for example the list of women and men on trial, from whom officers confiscated over 100 kilograms of meat, in “Tel Aviv Gorged on Camel.”

60. “Meat Trials”. On the important relationship between butcher and consumer, see for example Pilcher, The Sausage Rebellion, 1; Specht, Red Meat Republic, 225–26.

61. TAMA, 04-2857, Rokach to Deputy District Commissioner, October 14, 1941.

62. A classic example is Sinclair, The Jungle. A relevant example that highlights meat as a marker of difference between nations at war is Waddington, “‘We Don’t Want Any Sausages!’”

63. See: “Camel Meat or Beef?”

64. “On the Sale of Camel.”

65. “The War on ‘Abomination’ Meat”; “Exemplary Punishment.”

66. “The Municipal Veterinary Services.”

67. TAMA, M-1573/90, “Shalom Court Criminal Record 11655/47.”

68. See for example: “Trial on Camel Meat”; “What are the Citizens Fed?”; “Your Food Vendors, Israel”; “Robbery, Unlicensed Radio, Camel Meat”; “On the Meat We Eat.”

69. “Camel Meat for Citizens Tel Aviv.”

70. “On the Meat We Eat.”

71. Schorsch, The Food Movement, 6.

72. For example “Possession of Camel and Pig,” Ha’mashkif, October 16, 1941; “Pig and Camel in Restaurants,” Ha’tzofe, August 7, 1945; “Possession of Pig and Camel,” Ha’mashkif, July 30, 1946.

73. Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches., 35–60; Sapir-Hen et al., “Pig Husbandry in Iron Age.”

74. Guillaume, “Debunking the Latest Pork Taboo.”

75. Gillespie, Livestock Survey, 8.

76. ISA, P-344/9, “Arab Chamber of Commerce: Meat.”

77. Probably also elsewhere. These locations are according to Barak-Erez, Laws and “Other” Animals: 50, 196 n.40; and ISA, P-344/9, Nakhleh to War Economic Advisory Council, December 1, 1943 [hereafter: Nakhleh to Advisory Council].

78. Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 6.

79. For more on these porcine species and breeding centers in the context of Great Britain and Denmark, see Otter, Diet for a Large Planet, 29–30.

80. Gillespie, Livestock Survey.

81. Tamari, Year of the Locust.

82. Seikaly, Men of Capital.

83. Gillespie, Livestock Survey, 4.

84. Nakhleh to Advisory Council.

85. Barak-Erez, Laws and “Other” Animals, 50.

86. Jawhariyah et al. The Storyteller of Jerusalem, 234-235.

87. See above 84.

88. Jawhariyah, The Storyteller, 235.

89. Ibid.

90. Lira is the Arabic and Hebrew term for the Palestine pound. Zaydan, “Interview with Marie Shammas.”

91. Jawhariyah, The Storyteller, 235.

92. Nakhleh to Advisory Council.

93. Ibid.

94. ISA, P-344/9, “Note by Sh. Jamal”, n.d. This most likely refers to Shibli Jamal of the Arab Chamber of Commerce. [Hereafter: “Note by Jamal.”].

95. Nakhleh to Advisory Council.

96. Jawhariyah, The Storyteller, 235.

97. On the Jewish dairy industry see Novick, Milk and Honey; Gilad, “The Child Needs Milk.”

98. I was unable to find out the identity of this Jewish meat expert. ISA, P-344/9, Executive Committee to High Commissioner, February 9, 1944.

99. “Note by Jamal.”

100. Emphasis mine. ISA, P-344/9, Unknown author to Food Controller, February 16, 1944. [Hereafter: Unknown author to Food Controller.]

101. See “The Middle East Supply Centre,” in Collingham, The Taste of War, 126–31.

102. Unknown author to Food Controller.

103. ISA, P-344/9, Food Controller to Arab Chamber of Commerce, March 5, 1944.

104. Gillespie, Livestock Survey, 12.

105. El-Eini, Mandated Landscape, 177, 400.

106. “Note by Jamal.”

107. In Haifa, a network of Jewish men were allegedly raising pigs on a piece of land owned by a Muslim counterpart. See: TAMA, B-04-3091, Pinkas to Rokach, January 24, 1944; ISA, P-3073/15, David-Tzvi Pinkas, Personal Papers.

108. In the 1950s, some Jewish kibbutzim such as Lahav and Mizra raised pigs for pork.

109. “Executive Committee to Food Controller,” December 21, 1943.

110. “Protest Against Pork Vendors in Tel Aviv”; “Spinney’s Discontinues Sale of Pork.”

111. Helman, Young Tel Aviv, 55.

112. Barak-Erez, Laws and “Other” Animals, 48-49.

113. See for example: “Tel Aviv’s Protests.”

114. “Spinney’s Discontinues Sale of Pork.”

115. “Protest Against Pork Vendors”; “Public Opinion”.

116. See for example “Protest.“ Max Cohen remains an unknown figure yet his prominence in archival sources led both Barak-Erez and Igra to mention him in their work as well. See Igra, “Kosher Life,” 140 n. 74.

117. “Tel Aviv’s Protests”; “Public Opinion.”

118. Saraiva, Fascist Pigs, 115, 123.

119. On German products in wartime Palestine, see Plesental, “The Milky Way.”

120. “Tel Aviv: Protest.”

121. “Tel Aviv’s Protests.”

122. Barak-Erez, Laws and “Other” Animals: 49, 195 n. 30.

123. TAMA, B-04-3091, Pinkas to Rokach, December 13, 1944.

124. TAMA, B-04-3091, Agudat Israel to Rokach, May 26, 1944.

125. “Two Questions.”

126. “On ‘The Signs.’”

127. Ibid.

128. Rosenberg, “No Scrubs,” 365.