The owners of Miznon, an Israeli chain restaurant on Elgin Crescent, are proud of the role they have played in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. From delusional hasbara and cultural appropriation to direct participation in a fake Israeli-US aid programme that sets Palestinians up to starve or be slaughtered, Miznon’s owners are an allegory for a supremacist colonial ideology wrapped in the narcissism of western materialism and identity politics.
Miznon
Shahar Segal and Eyal Shani are the owners of Miznon, one of 40 restaurants in their Good People Group. Their North Kensington branch, Miznon Notting Hill, opened in 2022. The restaurant’s website says it “offers a bold, contemporary take on Levantine cuisine” and “a bold new take on Mediterranean street food.”
Shahar Segal
Operating from New York City, businessman Segal was, until 8th July, Spokesperson for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private company created by the Israeli and United States governments. On behalf of GHF, Segal provided daily updates on the work of the company in the Gaza Strip. If you’ve heard recently about Palestinians queuing for food being killed by Israel’s soldiers, it is the GHF that has been setting them up, luring them to “aid distribution centres” where Israeli troops murder them. Israel has reportedly killed over 700 Palestinians at GHF sites so far.
Far from providing aid, the GHF blocks it; the Israelis and their allies using the company as a sham stand-in for United Nations aid, part of their strategy of overturning post-World War Two international laws and norms and replacing them with a system of global subservience to Zionism. Blocking humanitarian aid is a war crime; starving people is a war crime, and the Israelis have no right under international law to attack or occupy the Gaza Strip.
In May, the World Health Organization said that the entire population of the Gaza Strip was experiencing food shortages. These shortages were the cover under which GHF was created to enable mass murder and to push the perverse usurping of international institutions by private companies.
In appointing Segal, a restaurateur with a reputation for quality, the GHF was attempting to trick people into believing that a private company founded by two genocidal governments cared about providing nutrition to the people Israel is deliberately starving.
Israel’s murder of people queuing for GHF “aid” did not deter Shahar Segal, and the Miznon owner’s Zionist pride was recently expressed at their Soho branch during a London Pride event where Israeli flags were waved, some blended with the rainbow flag.
Appropriating Pride symbolism has long been a way for Zionists to present Israel as a bastion of liberal social values. Miznon is typical of this, offering a “safe space” for Jews (in Soho, during Pride….) but no mention of the Palestinian men raped to death by soldiers in Israeli dungeons, or acknowledgment of the fact that the claims that Palestinian fighters carried out systematic sexual violence on October 7th have been debunked.
Presumably on the advice of lawyers, or perhaps because it was affecting business, Segal stood down from his GHF role two weeks ago. In his statement explaining his resignation, he expressed no remorse.
Eyal Shani
Miznon’s other owner is Israeli actor turned celebrity chef, Eyal Shani. From his public pronouncements, Shani is an equally proud and fanatical Zionist. Like his business partner, he expresses no emotion for the indigenous Palestinians slaughtered and dispossessed by Israel.
Shani has posted extremist Zionist propaganda online and has cooked for Israeli troops on the Gaza Strip border, fuelling their killing spree while offering no sustenance to the victims.
What explains Shani’s complicity? Like most Zionists, the Miznon owner appears to have been shocked by the October 7th operation of the Palestinian resistance factions, believing that Israel had completely subjugated the occupied population; unable to conceive that an ‘inferior race’ could inflict pain on a complacent society and its inflated self-image. We can presume that, like most Zionists, Shani is not shocked by the Gaza genocide, that he doesn’t understand why anybody would be, that he sees it as a natural expression of European Jewish ethnic and religious supremacy over a lesser people.
At 66 years old, Shani appears to have developed no critical thinking ability and propagates a worldview in which Israeli Jews are simply the good guys (or Good People, as his business is named) simply because they say they are. Rainbow flags might be the only evidence offered.
Three thousand of Shani’s employees have participated in the genocide. Shani expresses anxiety about their fate “in the depths of Gaza.” But he doesn’t worry about or mourn their victims. He provides 3,000+ meals a day to Israeli soldiers to enable the slaughter: “I have never felt so proud to be an Israeli as I do in these moments. It’s pure love to be part of this small, yet huge, organism called the Israeli people.”
Typical of propagandised, brainwashed and wilfully ignorant western celebrities, Shani is profoundly racist. He claims that Israeli soldiers are “fighting like lions” while the Palestinian resistance enacts “cruelty that has never been seen before, simply because we are Jews.”
Ever seen a clearer example of projection?
Shani foreshadowed his business partner’s role at the GHF when he said, “It is the duty of each and every one of us to do everything in our power to annihilate these despicable murderers, not leaving a trace of their existence so that this NEVER happens again.”
Ever read a clearer call for genocide?
Like most Zionists, including most of our politicians, the Miznon owner pretends that genocide in Palestine is part of a noble struggle for Jewish survival. These delusions are encouraged by the Western media. When the Melbourne branch of Miznon was protested over the GHF, the media portrayed it a reflection of rising antisemitism.
Za’atar
Not satisfied with their global empire of restaurants, Segal and Shani’s Good People Group are planning a boutique hotel close to the border of the Gaza Strip. The tastelessness of the Miznon owners in building a luxury eatery for tourists next to a death camp will come as no surprise if you have viewed Miznon Notting Hill’s menu, which is another expression of the owners’ pride in their settler colonial identity. The “Israeli” restaurant offers a mix of European and Arab dishes. The appropriated Arab ingredients jump off the page.
We asked the artist featured in this article to give us his thoughts on Miznon Notting Hill’s menu. He responded: “Wow what a shameless menu. They’ve managed to avoid directly taking Arab dishes but do use the Arabic names for ingredients such as Za’atar and tahini. Falafel of course is Arab and ‘batata’ is Arabic for sweet potato, so I don’t know how or why they’re calling their dish that.”
The Palestinian Arab cuisine stolen by the Israelis at Miznon reflects a sophisticated food culture, with lightness, subtlety, taste and authenticity – qualities the Zionists will never have. There are some things you cannot steal or destroy.
We contacted Miznon Notting Hill for comment.
by Tom Charles @urbandandyldn @tomhcharles
Art by Ayman Farag @hakaya.zawaya
For Reem (the SB Manc)
Urban Dandy 
Leave a comment