Copyrighting culinary heritage has become an increasing part of the international legal landscape. European Union courts, for example, have ruled that only Greek-made cheese may be labeled and sold as Feta, and that producers in Italy's North-western Friuli-Venezia Giulia region must stop bottling its dry white wine under the name Tocia Friulano because consumers may confuse this product with Tokaji Aszu, Hungary's famous dessert wine. More recently, in 2008, the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI), in a campaign called Hands off Our Dishes, declared that it planned to sue Israel to force it to stop marketing and selling prepared Middle Eastern foods, such as falafel and hummus, as Israeli. Although a large portion of the Jewish population of Israel is of Middle Eastern descent, ALI rejects outright the idea that these dishes may be part of an Israeli national cuisine. Using this case as my starting point, I will explore the economic and political implications of this claim. ALI's president, Fadi Abboud, has made these aspects clear, alleging that Lebanese producers are losing "tens of millions of dollars annually" because of Israeli misrepresentation, and declaring: "It is not enough they are stealing our land. They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine." In addition, I will examine ALI's claim from a Middle Eastern Jewish perspective. I will ask how Middle Eastern Jewish migration to Israel participated in the creation of an Israeli cuisine; Has Middle Eastern cuisine contributed to the formation of a Mizrahi identityM How have specifically Shami and/or Palestinian foods been incorporated into a Mizrahi cuisine What, if anything, does hummus consumption say about Mizrahi integration into Israeli society More generally, how are dishes and cuisines indigenizedi Has hummus, for example, become "authentically" Israeli, and what precisely does that meani Lastly, what does the Hand off Our Dishes campaign say about the way ALI understands Middle Eastern Jewry and how it locates Israel as Western or Easterns