Palestinian restaurant in Canada says Uber Eats suddenly labeled it as Israeli

• A Palestinian pizzeria in Toronto says Uber Eats abruptly started labeling it as Israeli.
• It said that the sudden change was “deeply troubling and frankly appalling.”
• Uber Eats said the issue stemmed from it displaying search results for “similar” criteria rather than just “exact matches.”

The owner of a Palestinian pizzeria in Toronto says that Uber Eats suddenly started labeling it as Israeli instead.

Levant Pizza said in an Instagram post that it was previously always listed as Palestinian. It said that the abrupt change was “deeply troubling and frankly appalling.”

Levant said that a number of other Palestinian and Middle Eastern restaurants, including Lebanese and Iraqi spots, had been switched to Israeli on the platform, too. A search for Palestinian cuisine in the Greater Toronto Area now yielded only two search results, the owner said.

“This move attempts to erase Palestinian identity by actively contributing to the suppression of Palestinian cuisine on a global scale,” the restaurant wrote. “This blatant anti-Palestinian action is unacceptable.”

A TikTok video of the restaurant’s owner explaining what happened has been liked more than 50,000 times. Commenters condemned Uber Eat’s actions, with some people saying they would boycott the delivery service.

Costa Warwar, the Palestinian head chef and part-owner of the Toronto Middle Eastern restaurant Flaming Stove, told the CBC that he was “very saddened” when his restaurant was abruptly miscategorized as Israeli. “I was feeling that something that’s mine being taken away from me — which is my food — and being described as something completely different,” he said.

Companies are being scrutinized for their responses to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a series of terrorist attacks on Israel in October, provoking retaliatory attacks.

As of Monday, there were more than 1,200 reported fatalities of Israelis and foreign nationals in Israel, the UN says, citing Israeli officials. Nearly 19,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, per data from Gaza cited by the UN. In Gaza, schools, hospitals, and mosques have been damaged, and more than 60% of its housing units have reportedly been destroyed or damaged, the UN says.

Uber Eats told Business Insider that the “unintentional” issue had been fixed. The spokesperson apologized and said that its engineering teams were working to stop this happening again in the future. Levant is now listed as Middle Eastern on the platform.

The spokesperson said that the issue related to when the platform displayed search results for “similar” criteria rather than just “exact” matches. They said that search results for Israeli and Palestinian would now only yield matches with that word in their name, such as Israeli couscous.

Levant serves pizza served on a focaccia base and Italian sandwiches, alongside hummus and kunafa, a sugary pastry-based dessert popular across the Middle East.