Alright, I'm not in the best mood today, so I'm gonna take this opportunity to rail against something that drives me positively crazy. What is it that has gotten my goat lately? Well, lemme tell ya. I've been wanting to get my hands on a Palestinian keffiyeh for some time now, so I started searching the web for possible vendors. What consistently came up? This whole idea of a "trendy keffiyeh." And that, my friends, does not sit well with me.
In case you haven't spent the past four years studying the Middle East, a keffiyeh is a checkered scarf traditionally worn by Arab men. Different colors stand for different countries. The black and white checkered scarf, which is tied to Palestine, became a trademark for Yasar Arafat.
So, here's what makes me crazy. When I see a girl/guy wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh they bought at Hot Topic for $8, I want very badly to start grilling them on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I wanna know how they feel about Hamas' election in 2006, or what they have to say about the seige in Gaza, or what's going on in East Jerusalem. To wear a keffiyeh, to me, means showing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, so for it be co-opted into a fashion statement is just offensive. Of course, it's totally in line with the misinformed, ignorant American culture to take a symbol of resistance and strip it of all meaning (what up, Che Guevara?) but the keffiyeh in particular makes me crazy.
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