You Got Your Keffiyeh in My Burka

Reflections on a Demonstration In Solidarity with the People of Palestine
From other issue one, June 2003

By Joel Schalit
Illustrations by Duncan Long

As red, white and green Jordanian flags fluttered in the fall wind over San Francisco’s Dolores Park, I wondered if this city’s community of Jordanian cafe owners had decided to stage a demonstration against discrimination directed at Arab-Americans in the wake the September 11th attacks. Driving closer to throngs of keffiyeh-wearing protesters, I could hear shouts of "Free Palestine" and "Another World is Possible," two slogans increasingly synonymous with anti-globalization gatherings over the past year.

No, I'm obviously wrong, I wagered as I surveyed what, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a distinctly white, middle-class crowd of tattooed and pierced punk rock activists. I probably should have known what to expect: this was supposed to be a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people, not by them. Besides, how many Arab-Americans does one ever see at any of these kinds of gatherings in the gentrified Mission district? Not that many.

Given how similar the color schemes of Jordan’s and Palestine's flags are (red, white and green), it became increasingly apparent that the pro-Palestinian protesters had quite possibly mistaken the two. They were waving Jordanian flags around, thinking that they were Palestinian. I could be wrong. But, as several blonde women departed from the demonstration wearing Israeli flag-colored blue-and-white keffiyehs around their shoulders, I suspected the worst kind of stereotypical provinciality to be at play.

How many Americans know the distinctions between the color schemes of the keffiyehs of Palestinian resistance organizations? I wondered as I watched these ethnic headdress-bedecked progressives disappear around the corner. Black and white stands for Yassir Arafat's organization, Fatah. Red and white designates the color scheme of the communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Green and white symbolizes the color scheme of Islamic fundamentalist factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

At least they weren’t wearing burkas.

Where Have All The Colors Gone?

It would be nice to think that the left’s years of historical interest in the third world would make a difference at such protests, especially given its long history of appropriating the aesthetics of rebellious cultures. At the very least, progressives like these might have taken the time to figure out the distinctions between Middle Eastern political iconographies. More importantly, they could have chosen between the symbols of political factions within the Arab world, identifying which ones American leftists ought to support. Not all Arabs wear keffiyehs. Very few, if any, would want to be caught dead wearing ones bearing any resemblance to Israel’s national colors.

Sadly, the lack of attention these activists placed on the aesthetics of Middle Eastern politics is indicative of a profound lack of learned sensitivity towards the symbolic nuances of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But my point isn’t to offer up the usual cynical truisms about the lack of attention to detail in American activist ideology, or to indulge the neoconservative cliché that American progressives are guilt-ridden white liberals who collapse all ethnic peoples into sympathetically-dominated exotics. Instead, I want to propose reading such examples of upsetting naiveté as crucial exposés of the complexities of Middle Eastern politics. What if we were to consider such political faux pas as necessary to the education of the left, because of how they might ironically invoke real subjects of debate in the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Next: The Devil Is In The Details

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