Palestine’s top brewmaster says Israeli settler attacks won’t stop Taybeh beer

In 1994, brothers David and Nadim Khoury returned to their hometown of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank to open Palestine’s first brewery.

With the blessing of President Yasser Arafat and buoyed by the optimism sparked by the recently inaugurated Oslo Accords filtering across the region, the Khoury brothers touted the Taybeh Brewing Company as the future of homegrown Palestinian entrepreneurship and cultural pride.

Just over three decades later, it’s hard for many to dredge up that kind of optimism.

With more than 64,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and with Israeli settlers and soldiers regularly rampaging through the West Bank, the prospect of a sovereign Palestinian economy seems further away than ever.

Last month, the Taybeh Brewing Co announced that it would be teaming up with Scottish company Brewgooder to produce and distribute a new lager in the UK. This new beer – Sun & Stone lager – is brewed in Scotland and was distributed among 1,600 Co-op supermarkets from 10 September, with all profits going to aid Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Madees Khoury, Nadim’s daughter and current brewmaster of Taybeh Brewing Co, told Middle East Eye the new collaboration was unusual due to the febrile situation in the West Bank.

“Usually when people do collaborate, when breweries do collaborations, you do one in each country or in each brewery,” she said, speaking from Scotland.

“But hopefully, maybe next time we’ll have our own, we’ll do another collaboration, we will do it in Palestine next time.”

Khoury said she had unofficially worked in the Taybeh brewery since she was a child, before joining the family business full-time in 2007.

She is, as far as anyone is aware, the only female brewmaster in the Middle East and one of the few globally in an industry that is still heavily dominated by men.

It is also the only brewery in a territory that has spent 58 years under military occupation, something that has always made beer production a challenge. Transferring their product – which until 2000 was 70 percent consumed in Israel – through the myriad security checkpoints requires endless paperwork and inspections.

‘I think women have more passion when they work in the beer industry’

Madees Khoury, Taybeh Brewing Company

A journey that should take a matter of hours can often take days as a result, leading to the brewery missing the deadline at ports for export.

These challenges have escalated dramatically in the last two years, however, with the surge of Israeli attacks and the construction of a new illegal settlement near Taybeh, one of a handful of Christian-majority towns in the West Bank.

Last year, Khoury said that while Taybeh’s beer is exported to 17 countries, the brewery’s sales have fallen by about 80 percent because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and crackdown on the West Bank.

“The settler attacks have increased even on our town, Taybeh, which never happened before. But since July, we’ve been getting multiple attacks,” Khoury told MEE.

“And every time, it’s becoming more and more violent. And it’s become very scary to live there and to do business.”

‘It’s still getting worse’

Khoury grew up under the Israeli occupation, and her earliest memories include travelling through the myriad checkpoints and security installations Israel has planted throughout the occupied territory.

Arbitrary detention, killings and settler violence have always been a fact of life, but the Taybeh brewery managed to punch above its weight, attracting visitors from across the West Bank and the rest of the world, not least for its once annual Oktoberfest festival.

“But these past two years, I would say, it’s gotten worse. And it’s still getting worse,” said Khoury.

On 14 July, settlers set Taybeh’s historic Church of Saint George alight, along with its adjoining graveyard.

That attack was severe enough to prompt rare condemnation of Israeli settlers by the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, an otherwise staunchly pro-Israel Christian fundamentalist.

Despite this, on 28 July another group of settlers set fire to two cars owned by Palestinian residents and spray painted racist graffiti on walls. Once the settlers left, the Israeli military also raided the village.

Khoury said that they were still managing to keep the brewery’s production on track. However, in July settlers attacked the spring providing most of Tabyeh’s water, as well one of the main water pipelines.

“The Israeli settlers, they broke the cameras. They broke the system. They burst the water pipes, the main water pipes multiple times,” she explained.

“And they’re residing there, swimming in the water and not allowing the Palestinians to go and fix the system.”

She said the lack of water made planning schedules very difficult, with the local water company struggling to distribute the limited resources evenly among the local towns.

“I mean, before these attacks, we were getting water once a week, which is not enough, especially when 95 percent of the beer is water. And now the schedule is just … you never know when the water’s gonna actually be coming, running water from the spring or not,” she said.

“But in spite of that, we still continue to work, and continue to grow and build. And we’re very passionate and feel that we can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

Product of Palestine

Support for Palestine across much of the world has grown in recent decades.

While much of this has come as a result of Israel’s increasingly naked and uncompromising use of force to maintain the subjugation of the Palestinian population, there has also been a growth in awareness of Palestinian cultural exports.

Foodstuffs like knafeh, maqluba and za’atar, the ubiquitous Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, dances like the dabke and beverages like Taybeh beer have become increasingly recognisable the world over.

It helps paint a picture of a Palestinian community that is far more cosmopolitan and diverse than pro-Israel campaigners – and even some pro-Palestinian campaigners – would have us believe.

“Palestine is one of the most liberal Arab countries, regardless of what people see on the news or what they think,” explained Khoury.

“We make beer for those who want to enjoy it. It could be a liberal Muslim drinking openly, could be for the Christians, the expats. You have Muslims who don’t drink, you have Muslims that don’t drink openly.”

And while she has been resistant to suggestions that she should more openly promote her status as the region’s only female brewer, she hopes she can inspire other women to follow after her and join an industry that was likely invented by women in the Middle East in ancient times.

“I think it takes time for people to change that mentality and the culture and to see it as equal,” she said.

“I think women have more passion when they work in the beer industry. That’s my opinion.”