In their recent book, whose Hebrew title translates The Big Guide to Hummusiot, three Israelis address one of their country’s most hotly debated questions: where can one find the best hummus? Dana Kessler spoke with Erez Tikolsker, one of the authors:

A hummusiah (hummusiot is the plural form) is a restaurant dedicated to hummus—just as a pizzeria is dedicated to pizza or an espresso bar is dedicated to coffee. It’s a kind of little restaurant where hummus is constantly made fresh, without colorings and preservatives, and consumed for breakfast or lunch. It’s a place where hummus is the main dish and sometimes almost the only dish served. . . . “The food arrives fast but it’s cooked slow,” Tikolsker said, trying to help me define something he never thought needed definition. “It is a place to meet with friends, but it’s not a place where you sit for hours like you would in a bar.”

“Hummusiot connect Jews and Arabs, and connect you to Israel in a geographic sense because you travel to get to places with great hummus, and when you do you also visit the place around it,” Tikolsker said.

He explained the regional differences: “Jerusalem hummus is sourer; they put a lot of lemon in their paste. And it is served with lots of olive oil. When ordering hummus in Jerusalem you basically get a bowl of olive oil with hummus in it. The hummus in Jaffa, the Central District, the Sharon plain, and the Triangle [the Israeli Arab towns and villages adjacent to the Green Line, located in the eastern Sharon plain] is less sour, and more neutral in its tastes, and served with less olive oil. And then there is the Galilee hummus, which I have difficulty describing but can easily recognize when tasting it.”

While the far left and the extreme right have responded with frenzied outrage to Israel’s attacks on Iran, middle-of-the-road, establishment types have expressed similar sentiments, only in more measured tones. These think-tankers and former officials generally believe that Israeli military action, rather than nuclear-armed murderous fanatics, is the worst possible outcome. Garry Kasparov examines this mode of thinking:

Now that the Islamic Republic is severely weakened, the alarmist foreign-policy commentariat is apprising us of the unacceptable risks, raising their well-worn red flags. (Or should I say white flags?) “Escalation!” “Global war!” And the ultimate enemy of the status quo: “regime change!”

Under President Obama, American officials frequently stared down the nastiest offenders in the international rogues’ gallery and insisted that there was “no military solution.” “No military solution” might sound nice to enlightened ears. Unfortunately, it’s a meaningless slogan. Tellingly, Russian officials repeat it all the time too. . . . But Russia does believe there are military solutions to its problems—ask any Ukrainian, Syrian, or Georgian. Yet too many in Washington remain determined to fight armed marauders with flowery words.

If you are worried about innocent people being killed, . . . spare a thought for the millions of Iranians who face imprisonment, torture, or death if they dare deviate from the strict precepts of the Islamic Revolution. Or the hundreds of thousands of Syrians whose murder Iran was an accomplice to. Or the Ukrainian civilians who have found themselves on the receiving end of over 8,000 Iranian-made suicide drones over the past three years. Or the scores of Argentine Jews blown up in a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994 without even the thinnest of martial pretexts.

The Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy was quick and confident in his pronouncement that Israel’s operation in Iran “risks a regional war that will likely be catastrophic for America.” Maybe. But a regional war was already underway before Israel struck last week. Iran was already supporting the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Russia in Ukraine. Israel is simply moving things toward a more decisive conclusion.

Perhaps Murphy and his ilk dread most being proved wrong—which they will be if, in a few weeks’ time, their apocalyptic predictions haven’t come true, and the Middle East, though still troubled, is a safter place.