I by no means actually favored the sight of the keffiyeh worn casually as a trend assertion. However since October 7, the cotton scarf – which in trendy instances is most intently related to Yasser Arafat, terrorist Leila Khaled and the violent Palestinian “resistance motion” – has come into its personal. It now seems to be merely a logo of Hamas’ need to proceed its “resistance” towards Israel. Once I see a keffiyeh now, I see an anti-Semitic blood libel, whereas earlier than it left room for doubt.
Nevertheless, this week I made a decision to barely take a look at my feeling that it was all the time dangerous information. Possibly a few of those that use it actually need peace in good religion, and don't need my type – the “Zionists” – to die.
Whereas consuming my morning espresso at a neighborhood espresso store, I noticed a lady (it was unattainable to not) carrying a strappy prime that uncovered her midriff and again, with lengthy, attractive hair, kissing her boyfriend. Over her naked midriff and again she had tied a keffiyeh.
Contemplating that it was a Jewish space, and contemplating that there had not too long ago been assaults on Jewish youngsters within the neighborhood, and contemplating the quantity of anti-Israel stickers, torn hostage posters, horrible defamatory banners, and murderous slogans and chants that we’ve all needed to see in each metropolis middle and campus within the nation, I used to be merely fed up.
She caught me taking a look at her disapprovingly and made a hostile gesture. I requested her if she knew that she couldn't put on what she was carrying underneath the regimes she was celebrating together with her keffiyeh.
Inside moments she was yelling at me about how a lot she hated “Zionists,” laughed after I stated that Jews had been attempting to stop one other Holocaust, and insisted that I might put on the identical garments I wore in Gaza.
I discovered it a somber however well timed reminder: Jews are proper to be mortally offended by the keffiyeh, and everybody else ought to really feel the identical manner.