Since October 7 there has been a steady stream of reports about the kufiya: their growing use and visibility, and, in response, efforts to squelch or silence or even arrest people for wearing them. I'm too overwhelmed to keep a full accounting, but occasionally I will try to post about the phenomenon. Here's one incident. Layla is a grad student in Social Work at Columbia, very active on Twitter/X and elsewhere.
I think this photo, by Mohammed Salem of Reuters, is the best I've seen from the recent Gaza events, the state-sponsored mass shootings in response to Palestinian protests. Click on it, fill your screen with it. I posted the photo on Facebook and one of my friends observed that it was like a Delacroix painting. It's from Friday, April 6, the second big day of the weekly rallies of the Great March of Return, when protesters burned tires to try to hinder the Israeli snipers posted at the border, who killed at least 20 people and wounded hundreds on the previous Friday. They were only partially successful: the snipers took out 9 more on the 6th.
The photo, I think, shows the indomitable spirit of the Gaza Palestinians who live in a huge open air prison, with very limited access to the outside world, whether coming or going, with massive unemployment, very degraded water resources, etc. Note that these protesters are unarmed. Note their youth, And note, of course, the inevitable kufiyas. Long Live Palestine.
This gif was flying around FaceBook, from the Chicago events last night at UIC, where Trump got shut out. Notice that, behind the guy whose sign gets torn up is a guy in glasses, holding aloft a kufiya-patterned scarf, with the collars of the Palestinian flag on either end. Behind him someone is holding is a Mexican flag. On the left, you can spot a woman wearing a cap with "African" colors. The protests against Trump were an occasion for the mobilizing of Muslims, Arabs, Hispanics and blacks, with identity symbols much in evidence. But photos and video footage of the protests also show that it was very much a coalition of people who came out, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-varied coalition.
I wasn't surprised to see video footage of protesters wearing kufiyas. Below are screen shots of two, that I found on this broadcast. I'm sure there were more.
Volume 2 of Orient-Institut Studies (put out by the Orient-Institut Beirut and the Orient-Institut Istanbul) recently came out (the journal is published only online). It's the Proceedings of the Conference, "Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region," Beirut, October 4–8 2012. I've not had time to do more than skim some of the articles, but they are all about the Arab uprisings and culture. Since my main area of interest is music, I thought these essays seemed particularly interesting:
At least one of the fifty some vets of Afghanistan and Iraq who tossed away their medals on Sunday, May 20, as part of the anti-NATO demonstrations in Chicago, wore a kufiya. Not one of those military-issue khaki ones, but a red one.
The photo above is a screen save from the following report on the event. Please note the vet who tosses his medal, starting at 0:37. That is Jacob George, from my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who has been riding around the country on his bicycle for two years, organizing against the war and playing banjo. Read about his project, called A Ride Till the End, here.
Forty one years prior to this event, on April 23, 1971, as part of an anti-war action organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, over 800 Nam vets tossed their medals, ribbons, discharge papers, and the like, at the US Capitol. The event was widely covered, and part of a major, ongoing mobilization against the Vietnam War. Alas, the anti-war actions in the US these days are, by contrast to those events, are a whimper.
Al-Haqed ("The Vengeful One"), charged on Friday March 30 with insulting the monarchy, for his song, Kilab al-Dawla (Dogs of the State). Read about it here. Read ANHRI's statement about his arrest and imprisonment and an earlier charge here. And watch the video, below. I hope someone produces a translation. In the meantime, here's a translation of his song, "Baraka Men Skate" (No More Silence).
On Saturday, April 14, between 100 and 250 demonstrators (depending on which account you credit) took part in a bike protest against the harassment of Palestinian cyclists and drivers on Route 90, the main north-south highway in the Jordan Valley. A senior IDF officer launched an unprovoked attack on a peaceful international protester. Read about it here and be sure to watch the shocking video.
But maybe it wasn't really 'unprovoked'? Maybe the red kufiya drove the officer mad.
"Demonstrators huddled in alleyways breathing through keffiyehs soaked in lemon juice."
This after "Border Police forces dispersed the rally [yesterday] by throwing stun grenades, shooting tear gas, and spraying “skunk” liquid." The protest was against the 18 year closing of Hebron's downtown Shuhada Street, which is open only to Israeli settlers. Read about it here.
Here are some protesters, presumably before they soaked their kufiyas with lemon juice.
This is probably the most interesting commentary on the riots in England that I've seen, primarily because you hear the voices of the artists who, collectively, are being blamed for the 'disturbances.' ("Rap responds to the riots: 'They have to take us seriously'" by Dan Hancox, The Guardian, August 12, 2011.)
The artists are so incisive, so smart, and their music is so brilliant. Professor Green, Lethal Bizzle, and Wiley. Mostly "grime" artists, not "rap." Please read, and please watch the vids. Here's a particularly terrific one, Lethal Bizzle's "Babylon's Burning the Ghetto," from 2007. Prophetic, no?
If all those pundits and talking heads in England who are blaming "rap" for the riots really knew something, or anything, about the history of rap, they would know this: after the LA Rodney King riots of 1992, rappers were widely blamed. In fact, if one had been following the rap of artists like Ice Cube, NWA or Ice-T, one could have predicted that LA was headed for a blow-up, and one could have understood the sources of the rage that boiled over in the wake of the acquittal of the officers charged with beating King. Ditto: grime, UK hip-hop and road rap, as this article makes clear.
"Irhal" or "Leave!" was the slogan of the Egyptian revolution. And he (Mubarak) did leave. Let's hope for an early exit of Bibi too. The photo is from the progressive Israeli blog +972. The banner says "Irhal" in Arabic, and in Hebrew, "Egypt is here!" It was taken at today's demo in Tel Aviv, which numbered an estimated 200,000, in favor of social justice, and in particular, focusing on the housing crisis.
According to +972, among those who addressed the rally in Tel Aviv was Palestinian author Uda Basharat, who stated: ”It’s about time this protest will be become the protest for all those exploited, Jews and Arabs.”
Connections between Israel's housing movement and the so-called Arab Spring have been, on occasion, raised explicitly. Joel Beinin reports in an absolutely essential piece on the connections between today's social struggles in Israel and the Arab Spring (published by Middle East Report Online) that: 'During the first week of the protest one Rothschild Boulevard demonstrator interviewed on Israeli radio’s Channel 2 told a reporter, “We have to do what they did in Egypt. Yalla, tahrir, jihad.” The fact that a middle-class Israeli suggested, even if it was only rhetorical excess, that this Israeli movement had anything to learn from an Arab political phenomenon is astonishing and unprecedented, to say nothing of the use of the hyper-provocative word jihad.' Beinin also underlines the important obstacles to the explicit making of such connections.
Note too this excellent report from The Real News, which shows large numbers of protesting Israelis last week chanting, "Mubarak, Asad, Bibi Netanyahu!"
The best slogan to come out of Tel Aviv would be one, however, where "irhal" referred not to the departure of Bibi from politics but the departure of Israeli troops from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
As Charles, who alerted me to this, remarked: if this were Iran, the US and European media would be all over the story.
Here's what Reuters writes about the story (via al-Arabiya), Friday, Jan. 7:
TUNIS (Reuters)
Tunisian police have arrested a rap singer who released a song critical of government policies as protests against President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's rule shook the North African nation, his brother said on Friday.
Police arrested 22-year-old Hamada Ben-Amor late on Thursday in the Mediterranean Sea coast city of Sfax, Hamdi Ben-Amor told Reuters.
"Some 30 plainclothes policemen came to our house to arrest Hamada and took him away without ever telling us where to. When we asked why they were arresting him, they said 'he knows why'," he said.
Ben-Amor is known to fans as The General. Last week he released a song on the internet titled 'President, your people are dying' that talks about the problems of the youth and unemployment.
The song came out as students, professionals and youths mounted a series of protests over a shortage of jobs and restrictions on public freedoms.
The protests have grown into the most widespread and violent flare-up of dissent of Ben Ali's 23-year rule.
Tunisian authorities on Thursday also arrested Aziz Amami, a well-known blogger, opposition militant Sofiene Chourabi said.
Security technology company Sophos said on Monday that "hacktivists" from a group calling itself 'Anonymous' had struck some official Tunisian websites, including those of Ben Ali, the government and the Tunisian stock exchange.
Tunisian officials had no immediate comment on either arrest.
I've only just been turned onto this website, featuring rap music from the Tunisian city of Bizerte. Check it out.
And here is more on El Général's arrest here, from al-Jazeera.
And...here is a translation of the opening of the song, courtesy this post.
“Mr President, today I speak to you in my name and in the name of all the people who live in suffering and pain. This is 2011 and yet, there are people who die in hunger, while others still look for a job to survive. But their voices are unheard…”
Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin for the NY Times
The cover of today's Sunday NY Times Magazine features a photo of Avatar co-stars Zoë Saldana and Sam Worthington. And you notice, right next to Saldana's left breast (in the shadows), a dramatic tattoo, in Arabic letters!
It's rather amazing that Hollywood stars desiring to have a bit of Middle East exotica inked onto their bodies can't seem to find an Arabic or a Persian speaker who could produce actual words that make sense. LA is full of such people, as everyone (except the stars, I guess) knows. So Saldana's tat here does have Arabic letters, but it makes no sense, the letters are just strung together randomly, and in some cases, incorrectly. Rihanna's Arabic tat, as you will recall, is slightly more sense-making.
I did a bit of hunting, and this photo from the NY Times may mark the first public display of this particular Zoë S. tattoo. As far as I could determine, from scouring some of the sites that pay close attention to celebrity tattoos, Zoë Saldana had previously revealed only two tattoos, one on her bikini line, and another on her left foot, also in Arabic. The second word may be is'al-ha, or "ask her," but I'm not really sure.
As for Avatar and whether or not it's pro-Palestinian, Zoë Saldana's tattoos are just a ruse. I seriously doubt whether James Cameron or anyone involved in the making of the film gave Palestine any thought at all.
Nonetheless, some Palestinians have strongly identified with the Na'vi, the "blue people," of the film. It's not hard to imagine why. Palestinians' experience of occupation, their very strong attachment to the land of Palestine...But more important is the fact that the Na'vi defeat and expel the colonizers. This is where the comparisons that critics of Avatar have drawn with Dances with Wolves perhaps falter. Avatar is a much more hopeful film for those confronting Western colonialism than Dances. Moreover, while the trope of the white guy who joins up with indigenous peoples in order to save them is rather old-school, 19th century, Palestinians today routinely incorporate "non-natives" into their struggles. In fact, the most important struggles going on in the West Bank today, struggles against the Wall, particularly at Bil'in and Nilin, as well as struggles against the ethnic "cleaning" of Jerusalem, typically involve Palestinians demonstrating side-by-side with Israeli progressives and "internationals"--the latter frequently involved with the International Solidarity Movement. The Israelis and the internationals aren't "liberators" coming from the outside but are there in solidarity with grass-roots movements that are led by Palestinians.
Therefore the stunning image I saw in the Los Angeles Times on Friday, Feb. 12, of demonstrators at Bil'in dressed up as Na'vi, made sense. The demonstrations at Bil'in started up in December 2004, and have been held weekly since 2005. They are one of the most hopeful examples of principled, non-violent, grass-roots struggle against the Israeli occupation, as well as of international solidarity. So I was glad to see them receive a bit more media attention, albeit short-lived and episodic.
This is the Reuters photo I saw reproduced in the LA Times, which was published in multiple outlets. I love the look of Palestinian Na'vi wearing kufiyas as loincloths. (The five demonstrators who dressed up as Na'vi included internationals and Palestinians.)
Check out the video to see the demonstration, and Palestinian Na'vi getting teargassed.
More photos are here, in a blog which unhelpfully calls this look "protest chic."
Kufiyas were much in evidence at the University of California protests that erupted last week, against plans by the Regents to raise tuition by 32%. (Despite the protests, the Regents did the dirty deed.)
Here's a photo from the LA Times of students at UCLA on November 18, heckling two UC regents as police escort them from Covel Commons.
Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / November 19
And another one, of students at UCLA, demonstrating near Campbell Hall on 18 November, from theLA Times.
Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times / November 19
At Covel Commons, UCLA, linking arms to create a barricade between police and protesters. At least one student got tasered in this action.
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Kufiyas were also in evidence in protests at UC Berkeley. At least one kufiya wearer was among those who occupied Wheeler Hall for 12 hours. Here the occupiers are catching food thrown to them, while they were barricaded on the second floor. (From the SF Chronicle.)
Michael Macor / The Chronicle
And courtesy twitpic, another shot of a kufiya-wearer in Wheeler.
Please note the diversity of the students. Note too that kufiyas have not been reduced simply to empty signifiers of hipsterdom. Don't believe the hype.
Since there will no doubt be need for additional actions like this, I hope at least some students from UC--and at other campuses where trustees are attempting to take the axe to education--will consider purchasing real Palestinian kufiyas from the last remaining factory in Palestine. Available from The Kufiyeh Project. I just got one in the mail--$12 + $6 shipping. But consider buying a kufiya-patterned tie as well for $25, with no extra shipping. Then you'll have a kufiya scarf to wear to all the protests, and a kufiya tie for professional drag.
P.S. Thanks to FB pals Jenny, Ken and Cathy for leading me to most of these items.
Annie Lennox (C), Bianca Jagger (2nd R) and British politician George Galloway (L) march through London with thousands of protestors in London, Britain, 03 January 2009. A series of demonstrations took place across Britain against the Israeli air strikes on Gaza. The protests are being held at 18 locations including Portsmouth, Manchester, Hull, London and Glasgow. EPA/ANDY RAIN
In London, today, among the 10-12,000 demonstrators were Bianca Jagger, Annie Lennox (ex-Eurythmics) and comedian Alexei Sayle, according to the New York Times.
For the record, Bianca Jagger's daughter Jade donated money at charity event for Palestinian children sponsored by the Hoping Foundation back in May 2007. So apparently critical thinking on Palestine-Israel runs in the family, or at least the female side of it.
You gotta love it, demonstrators threw shoes at 10 Downing St. (Britain's government is part of Israel's cover too, along with the US). And there were lots of kufiyas. Please note the kufiya on the woman standing next to Annie, below, and the Palestinian flag.
EPA/ANDY RAIN
Postscript: about 1/2 hour after I first posted this.
'In Paris, more than 20,000 demonstrators, many wearing Arab keffiyeh headscarves, chanted slogans like "Israel murderer!"' (Reuters, via NYT). And Israeli ground troops are now headed in...
Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
