Some are now calling the keffiyeh a “hipster swastika”, which might seem a little extreme, but it’s worth looking into both the protests and symbolism behind their choice of garb. Those likening the Palestinian-style headdress to the nazi symbol suggest the keffiyeh now carries the same connotations of Jew-hatred. Is that fair? What are the origins of that headdress? Like the Palestinian flag, the keffiyeh has some interesting history, but it has become loaded with meaning lately.

The background of the keffiyeh

Bedouins have been wearing the traditional Arab headscarf with its circular rope to bind it from time immemorial. It’s not new. A keffiyeh provides good protection from the harsh desert climate, from sand and sun, and has become standard around the Middle East, much as a suit and tie has in the West. The name keffiyeh is thought to derive from the city of Kufa in Iraq in the seventh century. However, the headscarf has different names in different areas of the Middle East, and comes in a variety of styles. Men in the Gulf states more commonly wear a plain white keffiyeh, while the king of Jordan usually wears a red one. And how about that black and white one?

The iconic image of Yasser Arafat in a black and white fishnet keffiyeh has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

But that keffiyeh is as Palestinian as Yasser Arafat, which is to say, not very.

Arafat was an Egyptian: by name, by lineage, by birth, and even by admission. Farid Georges Kassab, an Orthodox Christian from Beirut, was the first Arab recorded to use the term “Palestinian”. In his book from 1909 he wrote, “the Orthodox Palestinian Ottomans call themselves Arabs, and are in fact Arabs.”¹ Using the term Palestinian to describe people only began in the middle of the twentieth century, and for reasons of gaining political leverage over the already established Israel.

The keffiyeh then is not exactly Palestinian, but historically has long been a recognizably Arab garment. There are, however, different styles and colors which have meaning and tell a story. The story behind the black and white keffiyeh is similar to the story of the Palestinian flag: it’s ironically down to an Englishman, back in the time of the British mandate.

John Bagot Glubb had been a Lieutenant General in the British armed forces before founding the Arab Legion that later became the Royal Jordanian Army. The red and white keffiyeh was traditionally worn by Jordanian Bedouin, but Glubb needed a way to distinguish between them and the soldiers from Palestine under his command. So he came up with a black and white alternative.

The Sudra: the Jewish headdress

Colonizer or colonized?

The protesters wrapping keffiyehs around their faces decry Israel as a racist, colonial project. But the very scarf they wear testifies to the opposite. There was no autonomous Palestinian state to colonize, but rather the vestiges of the Turkish colonialist enterprise that had crumbled. The Middle East was divvied up and given back to all the indigenous peoples that had previously been ruled by the Ottoman Empire. This included Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as what would become the reborn state of Israel. They were being liberated from the colonial power of Turkey to become autonomous states.

Muhammad Y. Muslih, a Palestinian historian, affirms that during the 400 years under the Ottoman Empire, before the British Mandate, there was no political unit known as Palestine. Here’s how he described it in his work The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism:

“Before the end of World War I, Palestine formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Under the Ottoman regime (1517-1918), there was no political unit known as Palestine. In fact, the country was better known by its Arab-Muslim name of al-Ard al-Muqadassa (the Holy Land). Palestine was also referred to as Surya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria), because it was part of geographical Syria, namely the land mass that incorporated present-day Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Transjordan.”²

Palestine has historically been the name of an area, like the Levant, or Mesopotamia. The term was used to describe everyone, of whatever ethnicity, living in the area of Palestine. There were Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs, but there were no ethnically Palestinian people—rather, the Arabic speakers of the land were Syrians, Bedouins, Druze, Arameans, Maronites, Egyptians, Arabs from Transjordan, and other neighboring areas. Some of these families have lived in the land for generations, even back to the time of Jesus. Others arrived when more prosperity and infrastructure started appearing around the time of the British Mandate.

An important point to make here is that the term “Arab” can be confusing.

Arabs are not necessarily those from Arabia, but the term “Arab”  in the Arabic language literally means one who speaks Arabic. That includes an awful lot of people. The reason there are so many Arabic speakers is because of colonization.

Mohammed and his relentless wars of jihad saw to that from the seventh century onwards. A huge number of people—Jews, Christians, Zoastrians, Egyptians, you name it—were forcibly converted to Islam and to speak Arabic.

What would have happened if Israel lost in 1948?

You’ll often hear that this war didn’t start on October 7th but in 1948. The establishment of the state of Israel is seen by some as a travesty, a catastrophe. But let’s imagine what might have happened if the five Arab armies that attacked the new state had won, and Israel had lost that war. Would Palestine be a free state, with all its borders in tact? Not even remotely. The Arab army, remember, were not Palestinian but Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi. They would have divided the land between themselves. The key concern was maintaining Islamic sovereignty.

Abdel Rahman Azzam, first secretary-general of the Arab League, told a British reporter that the plan was for Transjordan “to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine with access to the Mediterranean at Gaza”. He candidly admitted that “The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to Lebanon.”³ In other words, the land would be divvied up to the neighboring Arab Muslim countries. There was no plan to create an autonomous state of Palestine. It would not have been “free”. It would just have been occupied by neighboring Muslim countries instead.

During the British Mandate, the Peel Commission tried to find a solution to satisfy both Jews and Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine, proposing a partition plan. This was roundly rejected by the Arab Higher Committee  in 1937 who explained: “This country does not belong only to Palestine Arabs but to the whole Arab and Muslim Worlds”.⁴

We see that same mentality today in Hamas. A Senior Hamas leader also said, “This…land…is not the property of the Palestinians…. This land is the property of all Muslims in all parts of the world.” ~ Mahmud Zahar, 1996.

The inverted reality of the pro-Palestinian protests

These protests have revealed a great deal of upside-down thinking, and the worldview that the keffiyeh now represents has become a complete inversion of the truth. As they say, when you point the finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you. Well that’s the surreal situation we’re seeing in the protests around the globe: the furious keffiyeh-clad protesters are supporting a terror organization guilty of the exact crimes for which they’re condemning Israel.

Some of the Palestinian keffiyeh scarves seen sported by PLO dignitaries have a design of the Al Aqsa mosque with the declaration “Jerusalem is ours”. This is the reason they rage. It’s not western-style freedom they want, it’s Muslim control of Jerusalem and the whole of Israel: God’s real estate. That’s not to say the people themselves don’t want freedom, of course many do. Many just want peace. But the drive to subjugate the entire area of the Levant, of historic Palestine, back under Islamic control is strong. Sadly we have seen it’s not just the leaders who are pushing for it and willing to sacrifice for it, but it seems the majority in Gaza and the West Bank feel the same way.

And now they have drawn multitudes of impressionable and eager activists from the West into their battle to reconquer. There will be a huge number protesting who only mean well, who are just responding to the images of innocents dying and in need, and the idea of people living under oppression. The situation is very complex and the optics are not good.  The truth about the lengths Israel goes to in order to protect innocent Palestinians is often drowned out, sidelined or censored. Reports from Hamas are believed and reported as fact while Israel’s word is constantly doubted and questioned. The outrage is understandable, but many have pointed out that this outrage seems reserved only for situations involving Israel. And in their fury they cannot see the irony of their actions:

They’ve turned campuses into battlegrounds, even as they demand a ceasefire.

They scream about genocide while supporting Hamas, who have genocide as part of their charter.

They bully and exclude Jewish students, denying them entry because of their race… while accusing Israel of apartheid.

They rage against expressions of nationalism in the West, yet wave Palestinian flags while shouting about land and borders.

They talk about innocent blood while defending Hamas who deliberately murdered, burned, and tortured children.

They accuse Israel of colonialism while effectively supporting a return of an Islamic caliphate to rule the entire region.

Sadly the keffiyeh has got wrapped up in the chaos, and has almost become emblematic of this demonic insanity.