I wear two hats: One is the Samir hat, where I’m representing my family’s long standing restaurant in Ramle. When I’m wearing this hat, I don’t talk about politics on social media at all. The other hat is the one I wear for Kanaan, a restaurant I co-own with Oz Ben David in Berlin. We serve Jewish-Palestinian-German fusion food. And, here, everything is about politics.
In Berlin, we prove that there’s an alternative way. We’ve been interviewed by more than 120 reporters from around the world. Our partnership even survived October 7, because we’ve been working together for so many years and we trust each other. We know that our leaders are to blame, not our people.
Kitchen, History, and Culture
My family, the Dabit family, has been in restaurants for almost a century. In 1928, my grandfather Fayek (Abu Fuzi) Dabit opened a restaurant in Jaffa. With the Arab Revolt of 1936, he was forced to close the business. He moved to Ramle, and began working as a chef for the British army. In 1942, he opened a place called Samir’s restaurant on the city’s main street. It closed in 1948, but reopened after the war in its current location: a 700-year-old Mamluk stone building, which looks like an ancient, dark cave. My father Samir started working here when he was 12. Cooking and hosting were what he loved doing the most. For him, it wasn’t just a place for food. He liked sharing his personal and political life — he was a member of the Communist party. Like him, I have also worked here since I was 12. All my siblings worked at the restaurant, but I was stupid enough to stay. It’s as tough as it gets.
We serve classic Palestinian food: hummus topped with fava beans, msabbaḥa, tabbouleh, grilled meat, stews, and stuffed vegetables, as well wine and beer. We always play new alternative Arab music playing and the space is decorated with sculptures made by my brother Nihad, who died this year at 56 from a heart attack. We have groups of tourists who visit, and we discuss history often. I describe the restaurant as a mix of kitchen, history, and culture.
I grew up in Ramle and when I was in third grade, I transferred from a private Catholic school to a Hebrew-speaking public school. Since then, most of my friends have been Jewish — this only strengthened my identity. I come from a communist, secular family. We are more Palestinian than Christian, and I feel more Arab than Christian. I have many politically-minded cousins, and we’ve had plenty of discussions about Arabs and Palestinians. They always assumed that I was not proud of being an Arab because I studied with Jews. But in fact, it only made it clearer for me that I was proud of being an Arab, an Israeli, a Palestinian, and a Christian. If I’m not a Palestinian, who am I? Do you want to erase my identity?
I make a point of referring to historical events by their years, not their names. I never say the War of Independence or the Nakba. If you want to have a political discussion you can’t sugarcoat things, because what is real hurts. Israelis like Arabs who support the state, and for Arabs, an Arab that supports Israel is an outcast. I’m neither here nor there.
I have lived with Jews my entire life. Until recently, whenever people said, “Wow, your Hebrew is so good, you’re really an Israeli!” I’d respond: “Yes, I’ve lived with Jews my whole life.” But in the last two years I started saying: “It’s because of the Occupation.” It’s a fact, but not everybody likes it. It took some dark humor to face racism from an early age, to deal with extremists. I only do that in the restaurant, though, face to face, because on social media you can’t have a discussion, you have no control. In the restaurant, some people get mad, and others say, “Wow, we’ve never thought about that.”
After October 7, I didn’t re-open Samir until December. There was no point, the streets were empty. Since then, business has been slow. People are afraid to come, but our regulars came to support us. Shortly after we re-opened the restaurant, I also opened a new business, Dukant Samir (Samir’s Store), a deli offering a selection of wines, beer, cheese and special Araks from Jordan, Lebanon, and Ramallah. It’s a pretty crazy thing to do. Who opens a business during a war? But I like challenges, and I believe the store will succeed. People adjust. And we’ve been through enough to know that in the end, things will go back to normal, one way or another.
“I started crying on October 7”
In Berlin, our restaurant is vegetarian and serves fusion food like hummus with kartoffel (German potato dumpling) poppers. We even wrote a book of recipes and stories in German in the two years leading up to the war. It was slated to come out on October 16, 2023. When the war broke out, we wanted to postpone the release, but the publisher refused, because of the pre-sales. For three months, the book was a bestseller in the food category on Amazon Germany, selling thousands of copies.
In the first two days after October 7, my partner was in a terrible state. He closed the restaurant, and he wanted to destroy Gaza and kill everybody. But finally, he started to understand the complexity, and he calmed down. I called him every 30 minutes before they started showing the atrocities in Gaza. I had already started crying on October 7, because I understood what was coming.
Then Hamas called for a day of rage, and precisely on that day we reopened in Berlin, showing we were against violence. We are for peace, understanding and accepting others. This is what my father taught me.
I keep thinking about moving to Berlin. I don’t want to be or feel like an immigrant. Until someone puts a gun to my head and tells me to leave, like in 1948, I have no reason to leave. The world is bad everywhere, and if you care about your environment, you’ll see that everywhere.
During the war, the German president invited us to participate in a round table discussion, to talk about working together. Oz always says: “We don’t have to learn how to live together, we must remind ourselves how to live together.” Throughout history, Jews and Arabs have lived together, side by side, and there were better times and worse times, but mostly good times. Politically, I hope the two peoples have their rights and can co-exist, in whatever configuration. We have no choice but to acknowledge the other’s humanity and pain.
— As told to Gerda Glezer