Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #585 - I am wearing my Keffiyeh in solidarity and support
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #585 - I am wearing my Keffiyeh in solidarity and support
Hi Mom,
Back in 1989, a friend of mine gave me this Keffiyeh. At the time, I did not understand it's significance.
I wore it for many years like many white "hipsters" (I don't really consider myself a hipster but whatever) without really knowing its meaning.
Later, when I learned of significance as a symbol of Palestinian Nationalism, and I decided to stop wearing it.
So I have started wearing it again because I do support the Palestinian nationalist movement while also seeing that the Keffiyeh is a well known symbol of struggles throughout the Middle East, especially for people who do not fully understand its origins and variations (different colors).
I am sympathetic to the issues Jews have with the Palestinians, but then I also know a lot of pro-Israel Jews who are vehemently opposed to the actions Prime Minister Netanyahu.
But for many, the Keffiyeh has been linked unfairly with violent terrorism.
This is an unfair depiction.
Given the recent actions of the Trump administration, it is time to call attention to many of the real issues of the Middle East and of its truths.
There are Syrian refugees in our country traumatized at what they have been through and what they had to escape.
Our so-called "president" is trying to bar entrance of people from Syria and six other Muslim nations from our country in the belief that this makes us safer from terrorism.
It's this same thinking that sees the Keffiyeh as symbolic of a "murderous jihad" rather than as a symbol of peaceful protest.
The current "presidential" administration is fueling hate that may make muslim people, some of whom that were actually born in this country, feel unwelcome simply for being muslim, simply because of fear-mongering.
I want to raise awareness.
I want to stand beside my Muslim friends. They belong here.
I want to hold the hands of Syrian children suffering PTSD from what they have experienced that's too much for adults let alone small children under the age of ten. They are welcome here.
I am so proud of my university for not just paying lip service to this solidarity but being proactive about it as an image farther down displays.
And yet some white reactionaries find any use of the Keffiyeh by other white people objectionable. I have shared some of this text here.
But it's the piece by Ben Norton that may be the best. It's okay to show solidarity, especially if you understand the meaning of the symbol you wear.
I am happy to say that my Keffiyeh was made by Palestinians.
I really do believe that some symbols mean something real. I disagree strenuously with anyone who claims that you can appropriate a meaning-laden symbol and turn it into a simple fashion statement; there are reasons global culture won’t let anyone get away with doing that to an angled swastika motif in black, white and red. (At the same time, I do wish more people knew the much longer history of the symbol and how it’s used in Asian cultures.) But there are two problems in this case. One is that the right-wing zealots are trying to foist their own blanket meaning on a piece of clothing that has a long history as a national symbol. I’ll come back to that later. The other problem is that Malkin and Johnson are complaining about a symbol that has basically escaped and vanished, lost its meaning in the Land of Miscellaneous Consumer Scarves.
The more popular the symbol becomes, not to mention the more permutations it gets put through, the less likely anyone is to make any kind of political connection. Regardless of how you feel about Israel and Palestine, isn’t that what we should be mourning here: the complete dissolution of an important issue that’s killed countless people, destroyed families, and ripped a region apart, into a meaningless fashion statement? The hilarious thing is that the right-wing froth squad have everything exactly backwards; it’s not like they can really stop anyone from wearing any generic black and white scarf, but they can yell about it as if the trivialization and dilution of real life-and-death geopolitical events isn’t happening. As if people’s fashion choices really did mean something, but the whole point of consumerism is that these kinds of meanings get sucked out and replaced with price tags.
Finally, here is the real question we should really ask ourselves: what about celebrities and political figures and everday folks who really do wear keffiyahs, unlike Rachael Ray, and wear them to express support for the Palestinian people? Malkin and Johnson would have you believe that this is a clear statement of support for terrorism and hatred for Jews. There’s something very, very rotten in that assumption — do I really need to explain it? Equating Israel with all Jews is suspect enough; just for starters, it’s an equation that a whole lot of Jews object to strenuously. Even in the United States, pro-Israel political leadership is having an increasingly hard time mobilizing support for Israel’s policies from American Jews, especially all the urban, liberal Jews in this country.
On top of that, the “keffiyehs support terror” mindset makes Palestine and any support for the Palestinian people equivalent to terrorism. You can’t really make that kind of claim with a straight face and also say you hope for peace in the Middle East
Flipping through a copy of the SL Magazine is rather annoying these days. The magazine is littered with photographs of hipster kids wearing square cotton scarves, identical to Arabian keffiyehs. They come in a variety of colours: purples, pinks and peuces made to match whatever huge sunglasses or bright skinny jeans they happen to be wearing, draped over their shoulders like some kind of hipster superhero cape. Their THC-drunk smiles relaying a kind of superficiality and ignorance usually reserved for the offspring of Hollywood celebrities.
The keffiyeh, for those that don’t know, is an Arab headdress for men, usually woven with a distinctive check pattern and lined with knotted tassels. It may not sound familiar, but trust me, you’ve seen one before: Yasser Arafat wore one, Lupe Fiasco wears them, and chances are that one third of postmodernism-loving Rhodes BA students wear them on a regular basis.
“So what?” you may ask. Well, bluntly put, the keffiyeh is a potent symbol of Palestinian nationalism. Much in the same way as the old driekleur flag is a symbol of Apartheid and repression in today’s South Africa, the keffiyeh represents a range of strong values: to Jews, it would represent terrorism; to Arabs, political resistance and nationalism; to young Western youth, a cute accessory to match with your edgy Che Guevara (“Oh, he’s that bicycle guy, right?”) t-shirt.
The keffiyeh began its ascent into Western fashion culture in the early 1980s when it caught on as a symbol of support for Palestinian freedom amongst politically-active non-Arab American students. Wearing the keffiyeh was a potent political statement to make too: The Independent called the keffiyeh “a symbol of Islamic militancy” while Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero was criticized by opposition parties after posing with a keffiyeh and was accused of “anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and Israelophobia”.
At this juncture in history, however, the keffiyeh is usually labeled as “cute”, “stylish” and “edgy” by fashion kids who know nothing about politics or current affairs outside of what they read in underground Cape Town fashion magazines. Vacuous hipster culture strips any sort of historical or cultural significance from garments in a ridiculous race to find the most ironic or esoteric clothes available. While Hollywood celebrities and American rappers may find the keffiyeh a radical accessory, the mass production and ignorant wearing of the keffiyeh cheapens the very values that it stands for, good or bad. To put it into perspective, I would liken the wearing of the keffiyeh by politically-retarded youths to the story of a friend of mine who wore a silver ring from the Silver Ring Thing (a movement that persuades youths to promise to not have pre-marital intercourse) while she consummated her relationship with her 16 year old boyfriend for the first time: she said afterwards that she only made the promise so that she could get “the sweet-lookin’ ring”.
Dumbass hipsters wearing keffiyehs is equivalent to gorilla-brained gangster rappers spouting ineloquent and violent lyrics while wearing giant crucifixes and, better yet, encrusting them with diamonds and rubies. The keffiyeh is as ubiquitous with Western perceptions of terrorism as HAMAS is, as symbolic of Palestinian and Arab liberation in so much as Timothy Leary is symbolic of LSD. Instead now, the keffiyeh is now symbolic of the constant and indifferent ignorance of “indie” hipsters today, of disrespectful Western society and part of a symbolic dumbing-down of intellectual culture. Along with Nietzsche and Chuck Palahniuk, the keffiyeh is now on the road to hipster decontextualisation, cultural stripping and assimilation into a self- and image-obsessed culture that feeds off of its own vanity and superfluousness.
(Dunno what a keffiyeh is? Bloody look it up, then!)
The kufiyah is one of Palestine’s most iconic symbols. It is incredibly important, therefore, that non-Palestinians, and particularly non-Arabs, wear it only out of respect for the wishes of Palestinians themselves.
(N.B., I use the transliteration “kufiyah” here, rather than “keffiyeh”—although the latter is much more common—because the former is more accurate vis-à-vis the actual Arabic, كوفية.)
I just received two beautiful new Palestinian kufiyahs, in the colors of the Palestinian flag. Both are Hirbawi originals, made in Al-Khalil, not that commodified hipster nonsense.
The Visit Hebron postcards they included with the kufiyahs were a nice touch.
It is an insult to buy the cheap kufiyahs that are sold in stores. The kufiyah has been mass produced as a hip, culturally appropriated fashion item to the effect that there is now only one Palestinian factory left: Hirbawi. If you want a kufiyah, support the Hirbawi factory, or do not buy one.
Yasser Hirbawi
The octogenarian founder and owner of this last-remaining kufiyah factory, Yasser Hirbawi, explains that it’s “the Chinese imports” that have put Palestinian kufiyah-makers out of business. “In the ’70s we could barely keep up with demand,” he said, “but by the mid-’90s cheap Chinese scarves started coming in, because of globalisation and GATT [the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]. We were forced to lower our prices and today we are working to a fraction of our capacity because we cannot compete.” At one point, the factory was making over 1,000 scarves each day; now it makes less than 100, and often has trouble even selling these.
The Arabic reads شماغ الحرباوي الاصلي (“an original Hirbawi shemagh”—shemagh is another word for kufiyah).
If you are eying a kufiyah and it does not say صنع في فلسطين (“made in Palestine”) and الحرباوي الاصلي (“Hirbawi original”), do not buy it! The point is solidarity—not cultural appropriation.
The Arabic reads صنع في فلسطين الخليل (“Made in Al-Khalil, Palestine”).
Solidarity, Not Cultural Appropriation
As a white person, I of course have no authority to speak about proper use of the kufiyah. In all of these above points, I am therefore simply echoing those made in a must-read article, “Why We Wear the Keffiyeh,” by the Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani.
The piece was originally published on I Stand with Palestine, but the site now appears to be down, so I have archived the entire article below (emphasis mine).
Why We Wear the Keffiyeh
by Nerdeen Kiswani
I have always received many questions about the black and white Palestinian solidarity scarf known widely as the Keffiyeh. They typically range from people purporting it as a “terrorist scarf”, to why I am against it as a fashion trend. The latter was especially questioned when long time cultural appropriator, Urban Outfitters, put up a keffiyeh styled button up and shorts; these [ 1, 2] are the Urban Outfitters posts in question.
A Cultural and Political Tradition
The pattern/style used on these clothing items that Urban Outfitters is selling is lifted from a Palestinian solidarity scarf know as a Keffiyeh/Kuffiyeh/hatta. The pattern and scarf are universally recognized and worn amongst the Arab and Muslim world collectively, however it is especially symbolic to the cause of Palestinian resistance. In the 1930’s the Palestinians revolted against the British Mandate of Palestine as well as the growing Zionist militias, many of them had worn the scarf to hide their identity, or show their support. It had thus become a symbol of resistance; to wear it meant that it was worn in solidarity. In the 1960s, the keffiyeh became an even greater recognized symbol of Palestinian solidarity when the leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat had worn it. Many other Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters donned the scarf on as well, ranging from faceless resistance youths in the intifadas, to the female freedom fighter of the PFLP, Leila Khaled.
There are years of history behind the Keffiyeh, not only is it something that belongs to our culture, it is also something we cling to symbolically to collectively resist our oppressors, the settler colonial state of Israel, and the illegal inhumane occupation. There is certainly no monopoly on the Keffiyeh in terms of wearing it in the Arab/Muslim world, since some who wear it on their heads wear it for simply cultural reasons alone. It is typically regarded as a symbol of solidarity worn around the neck.
However, it has been regularly bashed and labeled by much of western society as a “terrorist scarf” which insinuates that those who wear it are akin to supporters of terrorism. Coffeehouse and donut company Dunkin’ Donuts demonstrated this when they pulled an ad of Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that resembled the Keffiyeh. Critics claimed that the keffiyeh was “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.” Prominent publications were even questioning whether Ray was a terrorist sympathizer herself. Although Dunkin’ Donuts removed the ad after buckling under the pressure, Palestinians, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are still heavily stigmatized when wearing the symbol of support and resistance. We are given dirty looks when we wear these items and people accuse us of spreading hatred or even being terrorists ourselves. On my campus, a middle-aged male professor approached me, along with four other Palestinian women wearing the Keffiyeh, and said “don’t shoot me.” We are typically expecting this sort of language when attending peaceful rallies or protests, yet as Palestinians we also face this in our learning environment, the one place we mistakenly thought we were supposed to be safe. Instead of recognizing that we wear the scarf to support the Palestinians who were uprooted and expelled from their homes, and Palestinians that continue to struggle to this very day from apartheid, siege, blockade, and countless instances of human rights violations, we are simply vilified using one extreme word that our movement continuously suffers from ‘terrorist’. Western media has continuously labeled it as ‘violent’ and use words like Jihad, Islamist, Hamas, and terrorist to describe something that’s very important to us.
Not A Fashion Statement
In recent years the Keffiyeh has gained a lot of attention in the fashion world, it became a worldwide phenomenon for many people to wear it. It was sold all over the world mainly being imported from China with people were wearing it for ‘fashion’ as opposed to recognizing it for the symbol it carries, and the struggles it has been through.
Often when Muslims and Arabs express their solidarity by wearing a keffiyeh we are berated and denounced as inherently violent. Those who do not belong to either group and wear it are either considered terrorist sympathizers or simply chic, hipster, edgy, and even fashion forward. Most do not even know what it means and can easily discard it when it is not in season anymore, while we live with it our entire lives. The worst part of all of this is that this sudden popularity of the scarf had not benefited Palestinians in any way.
There is only one Keffiyeh factory left in Palestine in Hebron (Khalil), the ‘Herbawi factory’ continuously struggle to stay open, while most stores buy their keffiyehs from china at a cheap price and re-sell it at a huge percentage markup. It is a slap in the face to real Palestinian Keffiyeh makers who are struggling to keep their business alive. They sell it at a lower price and are the original makers of this item, yet stores who do not care about the Palestinian resistance, and often even criticize it, are outselling them. It would be considered an abomination to attempt to sell a keffiyeh patterned shirt like Urban Outfitters for $115 in Palestine. And although the price is much more fair on the Palestinian end, and is original, they are the ones struggling to survive meanwhile companies that do not care about the Palestinian cause are profiting off it. This cultural appropriation is especially angering because it was simply another fashion trend which people followed because it was in style. A solidarity staple was donned around the necks of people who did not even acknowledge the Palestinian struggle. The sentimental value was ripped to shreds when many stores carried it in different styles and colors.
A Symbol of Solidarity
Palestinians are not against cultural exchange or allowing those who aren’t Palestinians to show solidarity. If you are familiar with the conflict, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, you have every right to buy it, wear it, and flaunt it. There is absolutely no problem whatsoever with any people of any background, nationality, or ethnicity wearing anything representing Palestine as long as you support the Palestinian cause. However, it is important that those who do support Palestine buy the Keffiyeh from companies that actually benefit Palestinians and the cause. It is not cultural appropriation, and is a symbol of resistance, if it is purchased and worn the right way, with the right intentions. Palestinians encourage those who stand in solidarity to signify their support physically through such items as long as their stance is to support Palestinians. Wear the keffiyeh in your everyday wardrobe if you are prepared to answer questions about it, if you are doing it because you stand with Palestine, if you are doing it because you care, and if you truly support Palestine and want to raise awareness.
Most, if not all, Palestinians have no objection to anyone representing Palestine as long as they know what they are representing and they believe in it.
If you are interested in wearing a Keffiyeh in solidarity below are several useful links to where you can purchase them online:
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1702.09 - 10:10
NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.
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