Front Burner - The keffiyeh’s history of culture and conflict

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Earlier this month, the Ontario legislature banned the keffiyeh, a checkered black and white scarf long worn by Palestinians and often seen at pro-Palestinian protests.The ban was brought in because of a longstanding policy against clothing items that make overt political statements. But that decision has ignited a massive debate.So, is the keffiyeh a political statement? Is it traditional regalia? Is it both? Today, we unpack those questions with Vox correspondent Abdallah Fayyad.He recently wrote a piece called "How the keffiyeh became a symbol of the Palestinian cause."

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Earlier this month, the Ontario legislature banned the keffiyeh, the checkered black and white scarf that Palestinians have worn since the 19th century. If you go to a pro-Palestinian protest right now, you'll see a ton of people wearing them.

So in the legislature, the House speaker, a guy named Ted Arnott, said that he banned it because of a longstanding policy against clothing items that make overt political statements. The keffiyehs are a political statement, in my opinion. It ignited this massive debate. The premier, Doug Ford, wants the ban reversed. We see the division right now that's going on. It's not healthy, and this would just divide the community even more. So I stand by that. The NDP does as well, and they're making the case that the keffiyeh is a cultural symbol, just like a kilt or a kirpan, items that are often allowed. The keffiyeh is a culturally significant clothing item to many

and should therefore be permitted to be worn in this house. The party has brought it to a vote twice, but it failed both times because of a handful of conservative MPPs who are steadfast that the scarf is a political symbol. Agreed? Yes. Heard some no's. On Tuesday, when a group of Arab lawyers arrived at the legislature for a meeting

wearing keffiyahs, they were told they could not go in. And on Thursday, independent MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the floor of the legislature for wearing a keffiyah during question period. She refused. This hasn't just been an issue in the Ontario legislature. The president of a union representing public workers in the GTA is being criticized for wearing a keffiyeh in a video meeting. Schools in Berlin have already banned the scarf, saying it could be a threat to school peace. So is it a political statement? Is it traditional regalia?

Is it both? Are these bans targeting Palestinians and their supporters while other political symbols go without challenge? Today, we're going to unpack these questions and also dig into the history of the keffiyeh with Abdullah Fayyad. He's a correspondent for Vox, a Palestinian American, and he recently wrote a piece called How the Kafiyah Became a Symbol of the Palestinian Cause. Abdullah, thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for having me on.

So let's start with the origins of the keffiyeh. When did Palestinians first start wearing it? That's a great question. And the exact origins of it are kind of hard to trace. But the keffiyeh, as we know it today, we know it's been around for at least the last couple of hundred years since the 19th century. And originally it was mostly worn by nomadic people, Bedouin communities, farmers, for practical purposes. It protected them from kind of harsh climate conditions in the area, long sun exposure, heat, sandstorms and dust storms. And, you know, it was mostly used as a headgear that protected people. So it was a very practical garment. And it wasn't just in Palestine, it was used across the Middle East. And it was very much a practical garment before it started taking on this kind of larger than life symbolism that we're seeing today.

And when did it start taking on that, you know, more nationalist symbolism? It started during the British mandate, when the British occupied Palestine. The reason was that Palestinian rebels essentially used it as a uniform. And it started to take on kind of this identity along with the rebellion against British occupation, against British rule. You know, at the time, the keffiyeh itself was also viewed as a class symbol because it was, you know, worn by farmers, it was worn by Bedouins. It was among Palestinian society viewed as the headgear of lower class Palestinians. You know, urban, middle and upper class Palestinians wore different headgear at the time associated with the Turks. It's known as the Tarbush. I think another word for it is the Fez.

And so that people kind of identified by class based on their headgear. And the keffiyeh was largely viewed as more associated with peasants as opposed to kind of the upper class or more aristocratic Palestinians. But during the rebellion, once opposed to kind of the upper class or more aristocratic Palestinians. But during the rebellion, once the fighting kind of reached villages and towns and cities, the rebels wanted a way to blend in with the general population. And so they asked Palestinian men to also don the keffiyeh instead of the tarbush. And when they did that, Palestinians quickly started wearing the keffiyeh as well around their head, regardless of class status. And the rebels were able to kind of blend in to those communities without the British being able to spot them out easily as they could of national symbol of the Palestinian identity to kind of express the national aspirations of the Palestinians.

And it was a large victory for the lower class at the time because it was their clothing, their headdress, that started to embody the Palestinian men of upper classes had adopted it, but it also gets adopted by women at some point, right? Around the 1960s. And tell me how that happened. Yeah, that's exactly right. So after the establishment of the state of Israel, the Palestinian resistance continued, not just, you know, against British forces anymore. Now the Palestinian resistance was in opposition to the Israeli state. And at that time, you know, the keffiyeh kind of became a populist symbol. It had this massive populist appeal.

And so it kind of made a resurgence in the 1960s and the resistance against Israel. And it, like you said, started to be worn by women as well. And that's in large part because Laila Khalid, who is an activist and a former militant, was photographed after a plane hijacking, wearing it around her head. But unlike the men and the way they wore it around their head, she wore it more like a traditional hijab almost like to cover her hair. And that photo of her wearing the keffiyeh with a rifle in hand around her head, this traditional male garment struck a chord with a lot of people. And a lot of women across Palestine and around the world started to wear

the keffiyeh as well. And you mentioned this hijacking. So this was a plane flying from Rome to Tel Aviv. This is 1969. And just maybe tell me a little bit more about that. And also, this is around the time that the keffiyeh, it also starts to be associated more with terrorism and violent resistance, right? And tell me more about how that happened. Exactly. So, you know, there have always been, as in any struggle, kind of two movements. You have your nonviolent resistance and you have your violent resistance. And a lot of Palestinians have engaged in both. The keffiyeh is not unique to one or the other either. But with Leila Khaled's photograph after the plane hijacking

that you mentioned, it started to take on this kind of, in the West at least, symbolism as a terrorist symbol. Because Leila Khaled, the PLO at the time as well, with Yasser Arafat, who eventually became the president of Palestine, obviously famously wore the keffiyeh. He wore it every day around his head. And he was also classified as a terrorist by the United States and many other Western governments. We want to live in peace with all our neighbors, including the Israelis. Well, continuing on that...

It's clear and obvious. Mr. Chairman... And I have declared it many times. The PLO itself, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was also viewed as a terrorist organization. And any symbol that was associated with them, even if it was associated with Palestinians writ large, not just with these organizations in particular, started in the West to be viewed as part and parcel of their movement. And so a lot of people in the West started to view it as something that terrorists wear. And that can help explain why, for example, in some,

you know, school shooting drills that police agencies do in the United States, there have been documented cases where the stand-in that they use as the shooter during those drills is wearing a keffiyeh. Mind you, you know, a lot of mass shootings in the United States, most of them are predominantly committed by white men. But in this case, in these police drills, the association with violence looks to them more like the keffiyeh than anything else. You know, another interesting aspect of this story is that it's been appropriated a lot, right? Like we've seen celebrities wearing it. It's been co-opted by companies like Urban Outfitters, which tried to sell it as like an anti-war scarf. And tell me a bit more about that.

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting how these things happen, because the keffiyeh started to have a worldwide appeal to it wasn't just something that Palestinians wore. But it was something that a lot of allies of the Palestinians wore as well to express their solidarity with Palestinians. And as a cultural symbol as a cultural garment, Palestinians oftentimes, you know, encourage others to wear it as well as a show of solidarity. We're not necessarily offended when people wear it. We don't think it's appropriation if people wear it in solidarity with our cause. However, as it kind of grew, you started seeing a lot of anti-war activists wear it, not just to express their solidarity with Palestinians, but it started to be viewed as an anti-colonial symbol. So its meaning was kind of translated across movements, not just for the Palestinian cause, but for many other movements as well. And so it was a very popular item of clothing that you might see at anti-war

rallies, you know, in the 1980s, 90s, 2000s, after the Iraq war, you saw a lot of people wearing the keffiyeh. And oftentimes, you know, a lot of fashion comes out of those scenes. And so it started to have this kind of cultural cachet in the West that kind of brands wanted to profit off of. And so Urban Outfitters, like you said, did brand it in many different colors as an anti-war scarf. But when that happened, it also sanitized its meaning. It was kind of watering down the cultural significance of it by kind of erasing Palestinians from any sense of ownership over it. And so it was that was kind of with Urban Outfitters was an explicit example of appropriation, where this company tried to profit off of a Palestinian clothing without even

identifying it as Palestinian. And this kind of stuff is really insidious and you don't see it just with big global brands. Even Israeli fashion designers as well try to and continue oftentimes to try to appropriate the keffiyeh as their own to of David on them with the blue color of their flag and Stars of David on it, not the traditional white and black or red and white colors that Palestinians wear it with. And there's always this effort to co-opt it and take ownership away from the Palestinians from the scarf because it became over time such a potent symbol and symbols sometimes are or oftentimes are viewed as a very threatening thing to occupying powers to the dominant class because they're kind of seen as something that can rally people against the system In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

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In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I've heard you describe it as a cultural symbol several times. Do you see it as a political symbol too? So I do see it as a political symbol and I think a lot of Palestinians view it as a political symbol, but we only view it as such insofar as our identity itself is politicized. Because so long as you express yourself as a Palestinian in a public space, that becomes a political act.

Whether that's through wearing a keffiyeh, whether that's through talking about where you're from as a Palestinian, oftentimes something as benign as saying, I'm from Jerusalem, which I am, I grew up in Jerusalem, is viewed as a political statement rather than a statement of fact, because, you know, we're not supposed to have claim over Jerusalem, according to some narratives. So anything that we do to express our identity is viewed as a political statement. So oftentimes, yes, Palestinians will wear the keffiyeh to make a statement, but it's not any more political than a simple statement of fact, which is to say that we are a people and we deserve to exercise our rights as such. It's a very fundamentally basic political symbol of just expressing

our peoplehood. I talked in the intro a little bit about some of the spaces in which there were attempts or success at banning the keffiyeh. But I also want to acknowledge today that on the other side of this, people have been targeted with violence because they are wearing the keffiyeh, right? And talk to me a little bit more about that. Exactly. And I think that's kind of the danger of associating any cultural symbol with violence.

It's a racist act to associate a cultural symbol with violence and kind of view it as offensive because what you're saying is that identity in and of itself is offensive. And so here in the U.S., in Vermont, three college students were shot. One of them ended up being paralyzed from the chest down, I believe. Two of them at the time were walking. It was Thanksgiving. They were walking through Burlington and they were wearing keffiyahs. Tahseen and I were both wearing the keffiyah, like the traditional Palestinian headscarf, for a variety of reasons, like even like practically because it was really cold,

but on a more like, you know, meaningful sense, it's because that we felt as Palestinians during this time period, it's important for us to show our identity and to show that we exist and that we're human. Just walking along the street, you know, this man comes down the porch, approaches us, pulls out a pistol, like I just remember gunshots and falling down. Other people wearing keffiyehs in the US and around the world have been harassed in public spaces. They've been banned, just like you're talking about now, in certain public spaces, in Berlin schools. they view as terrorist organizations, rather than as a cultural symbol that embodies a people, that kind of association with it really ends up making it very dangerous for anybody who wears it

because they become a target. And that cannot be described as anything other than a hate crime because people aren't being targeted simply for making a political statement. They're being targeted simply for expressing their cultural identity. What would you say to someone who might argue, let's take the Ontario legislature as an example, that, you know, there has been this longstanding policy that political symbols are not to be worn in the legislature and that, you know, whether you like it or not, that the CAFIA has been, is very politicized and just those are the rules and that there are certain spaces where

we should be free from those kind of overt symbols. So the problem with that argument is that it excludes Palestinians and their narrative from it entirely. Because Palestinians do view this as a cultural symbol, one that represents them as a people. And while we view it as a political symbol in the sense that it expresses our identity as a people, we only view it as such because our peoplehood is denied to us, because we are denied to actually have the right of self-determination. We're denied the right to govern ourselves. We're denied the right to our own nation. And so that is the extent of its political nature in our eyes,

but ultimately it is a way to express who we are. And so any other cultural symbol, you know, that represents another people should never be viewed as something that is inherently offensive. And we don't ban those things either. So if somebody wants to wear traditional clothing or garments from their own cultures to express their own cultural or racial identity, we don't generally ban those things because we like to celebrate diversity of cultures and we like to encourage people to feel good about their own identity. And this is no different from that. You know, one example, one counter to this is, you know, imagine somebody try to ban legislators from wearing the Star of David around their neck. Now, the Star of David is a religious symbol.

It's a cultural symbol, but it also is a political symbol. It's literally on the flag of Israel. but it also is a political symbol. It's literally on the flag of Israel. That's how Palestinians can oftentimes view the Star of David. And that is a far more charged political symbol when it's on the flag of a nation state than something like a traditional headscarf is. But we would never say ban the Star of David from being worn on the floor of a legislative body, because that is a way to express your religious and cultural identity. And the keffiyeh should be viewed as no different. And if it is, then you have to ask yourself why you view it as offensive. Why is it offensive for Palestinians to try to express their own personal identities. What about the argument that you hear sometimes that the keffiyeh is a symbol of anti-Semitism

and that it makes Jewish people feel unsafe? I wonder how you might respond to that. I think one of the things that really bothers me and a lot of Palestinians in that kind of framing of the keffiyeh is that I view that as an offensive and racist framing because what it is ultimately saying is that Palestinians as a people are inherently anti-Semitic, that expressing our identity, expressing our desire for our own liberation, for our freedom, for our right to govern ourselves, for our right to be free from occupation, that expressing any of these things are anti-Semitic. And none of that is inherently anti-Semitic. And if you view those desires, if you view those expressions as anti-Semitic, then what you're really saying is that Palestinians as a people are almost savage, that they are not to be trusted around Jewish people, that they are inherently violent, that they are threatening simply by virtue of existing.

virtue of existing. And that's why sometimes simply being Palestinian is in and of itself an act of resistance, because it's just seen as kind of such an offensive identity for people. And, you know, just because the Palestinian identity might offend people, that doesn't mean it's offensive itself. That means that people's projection of what it means to be Palestinian, that's ultimately the racist problem here. I think that's the really concerning element of that framing. And you see it all over the place. You see it not just in Canada, but you see it here in the US. You see it all around the world.

There's a reason why Palestinians in Vermont, students got shot because they were wearing keffiyehs, because people are associating Palestinian identity with violence. They're associating it with antisemitism and nothing about our identity ought to be offensive to anybody. Abdallah, thank you so much for this.

It was really, really fascinating listening to you today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on and thanks for covering this. All right. That is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Tamerican Dacker, Ali Janes, Matt Muse, and Derek Vanderwyk. Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Sam McNulty. Music is by Joseph Chabison. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm Jamie Poisson, and we, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.