A Brief History of 'the Palestinian Scarf'

As Western youth take to the streets and conduct agit-prop, the history of the Keffiyeh is much more…multi-facetted than you might think

Earlier this week, a bunch of students ‘adorned’ several statues and sculptures in Oslo’s Vigeland park. For those who haven’t heard about it, here’s a bit of information from the Frogner Museum’s website:

The sculpture park is Gustav Vigeland's life work, comprising over 200 sculptures in granite, bronze and wrought iron. It was installed mainly in the period 1940-1949, but is nevertheless a result of over 40 years of work…

In 1924, the city council agreed that the sculptor's monumental Fountain was to be erected in Frogner Park.

Gustav Vigeland is, for all intents and purposes, ‘occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors’, as his Wikipedia profile holds. Born Adolf Gustav Thorsen in 1869, he emerged as a leading sculptor with many contacts to likeminded artists abroad, such as the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. whose works include contributions to the restoration of the magnificent Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim and the design of the Nobel Peace Prize medal. He died in 1943.

And now, as reported by state broadcaster NRK, this happened (reported on 22 Aug. 2024, source; my translation and emphases):

Statues in Vigeland Park Covered with Palestinian Scarves

Several of the statues in Vigeland Park covered with Palestinian scarves last night. The scarves were removed during the morning hours.

The Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina [trans. Action Group for Palestine] is behind the action.

‘We decorated 58 of Vigeland’s powerful sculptures with keffiyeh, or Palestinian scarves, as an expression of the broad Norwegian solidarity with the struggling Palestinian people’, says action group member Charlotte Qvale to NTB.

The Bymiljøetaten [Urban Environment Agency, which incl. street cleaners] removed the scarves in the early hours of the morning, and according to Qvale, they were thrown away afterwards.

‘We demand an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine’, says Qvale, adding that none of the statues were damaged in the action.

The reporting is accompanied by the above-reproduced photograph.

Meet the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina

The members of this self-declared collective have been very active protesting Israel’s actions in the Middle East for some time. They have accounts both at Instagram and Facebook, which are, well, judge for yourself, but I’d consider them rather ‘empty’ of both a long-standing history and substantive content. Of course, they are asking for donations for their activism, which they describe, on Facebook, as follows:

Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina is a cross-political, religiously neutral, and ad hoc group that works for peace and justice in Palestine.

We work with demonstrations, lobbying, information and awareness-raising. We always work on the basis of non-violent principles.

I have looked neither far nor wide nor very long, but I struggle to find evidence of their existence prior to early 2024. Among the older items I was able to identify is a legacy media report dated 5 Jan. 2024 in which they demanded a ‘cultural boycott’ of Israel from Norway’s Culture Minister (who then visited the opera house; video here).

In early February 2024, Journalen, the student newspaper of Oslo’s City University (OsloMet), ran the following report that sheds a bit of light on the people behind Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina:

‘We will not give in’

By Kjersti Hareland, Journalen, 1 Feb. 2024 [source]

Today the Norwegian Parliament will vote against or in favour of sanctions against Israel. The Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina had a clear message for the politicians…

Calls for Stronger [Anti-Israel] Measures

On Thursday, 1 February, many people gathered at Eidsvoll Plass in front of the Norwegian Parliament to demonstrate for more sanctions against Israel.

The demonstration was organised by the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina, and Anne Gerd Grimsby Haarr welcomed those who attended.

‘They will most likely vote against sanctions today, but we will not give in’, she says.

She goes on to say that she knows there is a movement in the Storting in favour of stronger measures, and that this is why they are at Eidsvolls Plass today.

Against [PM Støre’s] Labour Party

Cinta Asmara Hondsmerk, a student at OsloMet, was one of those who took part in the action. She wants the majority to vote in favour of sanctions against Israel, but is afraid it will go the other way.

‘I hope they vote in favour, but last time the result wasn't so good, so I don’t dare have too high hopes.’

Hondsmerk has turned up today with white roses and a note with a QR code showing how many signatures the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina has collected [I was unable to find out how many].

‘In this way, the politicians can see how many people have signed in favour of sanctions against Israel. Then we’ll see what happens later today.’

The white roses will be a play on the Labour Party’s red rose, which stands for solidarity and love.

Dependent on Western Countries

NATO condemned the Hamas attack that took place on 7 October, but said that Israel had to respond with proportional means.

Grimsby Haarr says that what is happening in Palestine is very dependent on the support of Western countries.

‘Norway must do what we can to show that we do not accept these actions.’

The Norwegian parliament voted to recognise Palestine as a state in November, but has not yet indicated that it will vote in favour of sanctions against Israel. The result of the vote will be announced during the day on Thursday 1 February.

Norway, unsurprisingly, voted against sanctions. For my reporting on the absurd theatrics surrounding the formal recognition of ‘Palestine’, see this:

Norway, Spain, Ireland to 'Recognise Palestine'

The Journalen report is, of course, adorned with a few photographs of young people all wearing a specific pièce de résistance, the Palestinian scarf.

Incidentally, that item is also the one that was put on the statues in Vigeland park earlier this week.

I propose now, as my hypothesis of this piece, that none of the members of the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina—nor the tens of thousands of other young, Western protesters (dupes)—knows where it comes from or what it implies.

If they would know, they may be a bit more hesitant to don it.

The Keffiyeh and its ‘Inventor’

While the scarf itself is, of course, innocent (it’s a piece of traditional clothing widely used by Arab farmers to keep their head covered in the blistering sun), its history is very pertinent.

And if you’d spend a few minutes with the de facto official accounts of the items mentioned (via: Wikipedia), it quickly becomes clear that the polemics are not merely ‘a-o.k.’ but highly pertinent.

From Wikipedia’s biography of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, we learn, among others, the following (references omitted for readability):

Al-Husseini was the scion of the al-Husayni family of Jerusalemite Arab nobles, who trace their origins to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad…

In 1912, he pursued Salafist religious studies in Cairo. Husseini later went on to serve in the Ottoman army during World War I. At war’s end he stationed himself in Damascus as a supporter of the Arab Kingdom of Syria, but following its disestablishment, he moved back to Jerusalem, shifting his pan-Arabism to a form of Palestinian nationalism. From as early as 1920, he actively opposed Zionism, and as a leader of the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, was sentenced for ten years imprisonment but pardoned by the British.

As always, there is much more to any of these items than we can discuss here at some reasonable length.

In 1921, Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a position he used to promote Islam while rallying a non-confessional Arab nationalism against Zionism. During the 1921–1936 period, he was considered an important ally by the British authorities. His appointment by the British for the role of grand mufti of all Palestine (a new role established by the British) helped divide the Palestinian leadership structure and national movement.

As we can clearly see, the British did what they were known to be really good at: divide and conquer. I doubt that Mr. Samuel—nor anyone else in London except for the pro-Zionist circles—had any illusions, much less qualms, about favouring one group to keep these pesky colonials squabbling among themselves and continuing to appeal to the British for mediation. In short, there’s nothing extraordinary or particularly ghastly about this. Back to the Wikipedia account of Husseini’s life:

In 1937, evading an arrest warrant for aligning himself as leader of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against British rule, he fled and took refuge in Lebanon and afterwards Iraq [oh, look, the monster the British cultivated is now trying to kick them out]. He then established himself in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which he collaborated with during World War II against Britain, requesting during a meeting with Adolf Hitler backing for Arab independence and opposition to the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine [care to fact-check this one? All the facts mentioned by U.M. are actually true, ‘even’ if they are conveyed in a rather…polemic manner]. Upon the end of the war, he came under French protection, and then sought refuge in Cairo. In the lead-up to the 1948 Palestine war, Husseini opposed both the 1947 UN Partition Plan and Jordan’s plan to annex the West Bank. Failing to gain command of the Arab League’s Arab Liberation Army, Husseini built his own militia, the Holy War Army. In September 1948 he participated in the establishment of an All-Palestine Government in Egyptian-ruled Gaza, but this government won limited recognition and was eventually dissolved by Egypt in 1959. After the war and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, his claims to leadership were discredited and he was eventually sidelined by the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. He died in Beirut, Lebanon, in July 1974.

As you may have guessed, there’s a lot to disentangle here. Husseini’s collaboration with Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany is very well established, but, as far as ‘we’ can determine—sources being, among others, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem—Husseini never visited concentration or extermination camps.

Still, he met with Hitler, Himmler, and others, raised several Waffen SS units, mostly among the Balkan’s muslims, and began hunting down Jews and people of other regional ethnic background (Croats, Serbs, Roma and Sinti).

We’ll leave these sordid aspects behind here (there’s a ton on it), and revert back to the keffiyeh.

The Keffiyeh and its Meaning

The headgear itself is hardly ‘newsworthy’ or even ‘special’, as Wikipedia informs us.

[It] is a traditional headdress worn by men from parts of the Middle East. It is fashioned from a square scarf, and is usually made of cotton. The keffiyeh is commonly found in arid regions, as it provides protection from sunburn, dust, and sand…A head cord, agal, is often used by Arabs to keep the [keffiyeh] in place.

It was during the Mohammed al-Husseini-led 1936-39 uprising that the keffiyeh became the thing among Palestinian Arabs:

Prior to the 1930s, Arab villagers and peasants wore the white keffiyeh and agal (rope) while city residents and the educated elite wore the Ottoman tarbush (fez). During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Arab rebel commanders ordered all Arabs to don the keffiyeh. In 1938, British Mandatory High Commissioner in Palestine, Harold MacMichael, reported to the Foreign Office: ‘This “order” has been obeyed with surprising docility and it is not an exaggeration to say that in a month eight out of every ten tarbushes in the country had been replaced by the [keffiyeh and] “agal”.’

Note the colour ‘white’.

The black and white chequered keffiyeh dates to the 1950s when Glubb Pasha, a British officer, wanted to distinguish his Palestinian soldiers (black and white keffiyeh) from his Jordanian forces (red and white keffiyeh). The black and white keffiyeh’s prominence increased during the 1960s with the beginning of the Palestinian resistance movement and its adoption by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

And it changed in the 1950s and 1960s.

During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, pro-Palestinian protests around the world saw demonstrators wearing keffiyeh…

Today, the keffiyeh as a symbol of Palestinian identity is largely imported from China. With the scarf's growing popularity in the 2000s, Chinese manufacturers entered the market, driving Palestinians out of the business Mother Jones wrote, ‘Ironically, global support for Palestinian-statehood-as-fashion-accessory has put yet another nail in the coffin of the Occupied Territories’ beleaguered economy.’

That last sentence is from a 2009 piece, which you can (should) read here.

When Sonja Sharp penned her short piece fifteen years ago, she wrote:

The symbol of intifada is second only to the Che t-shirt for its global ubiquity and collegiate rebel chic.

Perhaps this has changed in the past half-year.

So, what’s the Norwegian Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina got to do with this? Reverting back to the afore-cited Wikipedia entry, we learn ‘more’:

The keffiyeh has been seen as chic among non-Arabs in the West. Keffiyehs became popular in the UK in the 1970s and then in the United States in the late 1980s at the start of the First Intifada, when bohemian girls and punks wore keffiyehs as scarves around their necks. In the early 2000s keffiyehs were very popular among youths in Tokyo, who often wore them with camouflage clothing. The trend recurred in the mid-2000s in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia, when the keffiyeh became popular as a fashion accessory, usually worn as a scarf around the neck in hipster circles.

Of course, commercialisation of such items often reeks of ‘cultural appropriation’ (I’m not going down this rabbit hole, but Wikipedia does, if you fancy that).

Even worse, from an irony point of view, is that the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina, on its Facebook website displays the following imagery:

The flag is obvious enough—but the watermelon?

I mean, come on, this has long been the symbol/reference for ‘green on the outside, dark red on the inside’.

Of course, the Aksjonsgruppa for Palestina consists of far-left nutjobs, and perhaps they’re trolling everybody else.

It may as well be that they’re a front for whatever ‘deep state’ outfit, which doesn’t mean its membership may know about that.

In that case, these idiots may actually be useful to someone, albeit not to the Palestinians.

And thus concludes the brief history of the keffiyeh, with a whimper and a *facepalm*, as well as an invitation to you, my dear readers, to suggest any kind of group, circumstance, or location the keffiyeh may next appear as ‘cool’ and/or ‘rebel-chic’ thing.

My money would be on ‘the Oscars™’ or the like, with Kamala Harris’ campaign stops a close second.

*shudder*