The Dangerous Evolution of the Keffiyeh
Antisemitism is not confined to hateful and libelous posters, demonstrations, and rhetoric. It has increasingly morphed into physical attacks on Jews, which explains the presence of armed security guards every Shabbat and during large venues at your synagogue. Of course, you could not miss the heavy presence of armed security guards and police at your schul during the High Holy Days.
And then there is the ubiquitous keffiyeh—the new swastika and the latest fashion symbol, increasingly used: to conceal the identities of those engaged in illegal or terrorist activities, to signal hostility toward Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and to instill fear in those it is intended to intimidate.
Historically, the keffiyeh was associated with Bedouins who wore it as a head covering to protect against the desert sun, dust, sand, and chilly evenings. Then in the 1930s, it became a symbol of the Palestinian Arab revolt against the British. During that revolt, fighters used it to conceal their identities, so that British authorities could not distinguish terrorists from the broader population. It was the forerunner of today’s terrorist tactic of cowardly embedding themselves within their civilian population.
The keffiyeh’s political significance grew dramatically in the 1960s with the rise of Palestinian Arab terrorist organizations. The most influential figure in transforming the black-and-white keffiyeh into an internationally recognizable Palestinian Arab symbol, was the gun-toting chairman of the PLO, the duplicitous Yassar Arafat.
Today, the garment has an unmistakable history that cannot simply be divorced from the movement it came to symbolize, the campaign to eliminate the one Jewish state in the world.
After the Arab states and Palestinian Arab forces failed to achieve their objective through a succession of wars, from 1948 till this day, terrorist organizations resorted to attacks on Israel’s civilian population. When terrorism failed to achieve Israel’s destruction, the strategy evolved. Its latest incarnation has been to recruit sympathetic allies by demonizing Israel, seeking to turn it into a pariah state—and, in the process, helping awaken dormant antisemitism around the world.
Unfortunately, that tactic is working.
The more consequential question, therefore, is not simply whether someone wears a keffiyeh, but what the wearer believes it represents. In today’s combative environment, its symbolism signals unmistakable support for eliminating the Jewish homeland rather than merely supporting the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel.
That distinction is critical to understanding how the keffiyeh has been transformed from a practical garment worn by desert-dwelling nomads into a potent political symbol—one increasingly associated with hostility toward Israel and, in its most extreme manifestations, with consequences that threaten the safety and security of Israelis. Whatever its original purpose, its meaning in today’s contentious climate is far more dangerous and consequential, not only for Israelis, but for Jews around the world.
