Ke yeh honours terrorism
It has no place in legislature
UNAMBIGUOUSLY A FRAUGHT SYMBOL OF VIOLENCE. — RAHIM MOHAMED
With the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s keffiyeh ban now into its second week, opponents of the measure are doubling down on making the garment their latest cause célèbre — even as keffiyehs remain a fixture of the increasingly chaotic anti-israel demonstrations plaguing our streets.
And while keffiyeh defenders like Opposition Leader Marit Stiles — and, for that matter, Premier Doug Ford — continue to insist that it is a “culturally significant” item of dress for many in the province’s Arab community, they seem wilfully blind to its unshakable association with Palestinian political violence.
While Bedouin farmers in the Levant have indeed worn patterned scarves for centuries, the black-and-white fishnet pattern scarf favoured by protesters is synonymous with militant Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat adopted the accessory as his personal emblem while scaling the ranks of the Palestinian liberation movement in the 1960s.
The keffiyeh was, in fact, one of the few constants of Arafat’s notoriously mercurial five decades at the helm of the armed Palestinian resistance. He was rarely photographed without a checkered black-and-white scarf tied around his head, often secured with a black agal cord. He characteristically draped the scarf over his right shoulder, arranging it in a triangular shape resembling the borders of the territories claimed as Palestine. Arafat ultimately became so closely associated with the keffiyeh that, at one point, it was known interchangeably as an “Arafat scarf.”
Arafat’s political legacy, of course, extends far beyond the sartorial. He did more than perhaps anyone to mould the Palestinian liberation movement into the genocidal death cult it is today.
As head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Arafat devoted himself to the violent usurpation of the “Zionist” regime in Israel. This goal was spelled out plainly in the organization’s 1968 covenant, which read, “Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase.”
In 1974, Arafat told an Italian correspondent, “We don’t want peace, we want victory.” Adding, to remove any ambiguity, “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel and nothing else.” He also spoke frequently of his lifelong obsession to conquer Jerusalem on behalf of his Arab forefathers.
Arafat would ultimately become one of the world’s most prolific architects of terror. Under his auspices, the PLO, and its affiliates, would carry out some of the 20th century’s most notorious acts of transnational terrorism, including the Feb. 1970 bombing of Swissair Flight 330 and the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Israeli and American intelligence indicates Arafat personally ordered the execution of three diplomats taken hostage during a spring 1973 raid of the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.
A 2002 report submitted to the Israeli government concluded that Arafat was “personally involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks,” outlining further that he “encouraged them ideologically, authorized them financially and personally headed the Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades organization.”
Arafat would deal one final (and perhaps fatal) blow to the Israeli-palestinian peace process in 2000, walking away from a United States-brokered peace agreement that would have given Palestinians control of 92 per cent of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip. Then-israeli prime minister Ehud Barak would later reflect, “(Arafat) did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own.” It’s impossible to say just how Arafat’s intransigence set back the cause of his fellow Palestinians.
When they don a blackand-white patterned keffiyeh, professed supporters of the Palestinian cause are, knowingly or not, endorsing Arafat’s well-documented legacy of carnage and destruction. The “Arafat scarf” is unambiguously a fraught symbol of violence and intolerance — it has no place whatsoever inside a deliberative chamber like the Ontario Legislative Assembly.
Legislative Assembly Speaker Ted Arnott is, accordingly, more than justified in prohibiting the keffiyeh from being worn inside the legislative building, in line with the existing rule against members wearing any clothing that makes a political statement.
The Palestinian keffiyeh is less a garment of “cultural significance” than it is the cousin of a Che Guevara T-shirt: a trendy fashion accessory worn performatively by low-information activists who are mostly oblivious of its murderous origins. It wasn’t too long ago, in fact, that Che T-shirts and Arafat scarves could be found in adjacent aisles at your local Urban Outfitters — which should tell you a lot about the crowd both items appeal to.
Arafat died nearly 20 years ago, leaving behind a legacy of failure and futility. It’s long past time to consign both Arafat and the black-andwhite scarf he made famous into the dustbin of history.
ARAFAT ADOPTED THE ACCESSORY AS HIS PERSONAL EMBLEM.