Kaffiyehs are now ‘as Palestinian as wonton soup’

[oberliner]

HEBRON // It is the ultimate Palestinian symbol, almost a global brand. Walk the narrow alleys of Hebron’s old city and the white and black chequered kaffiyeh is everywhere, either hanging outside shops or draped around necks, old and young.

But the likelihood is that the kaffiyehs on show here are now as Palestinian as won ton soup. Cheap imports, often from China, have had a devastating effect on traditional local Palestinian industries, with everything from soap factories to olive oil production adversely affected.

Not far up the hill from the shops of Hebron’s old city lies the last Palestinian textile company to make kaffiyehs. The Herbawi Textile Factory, established in 1960, is an institution in Hebron, but Yasser Mohammed Herbawi, the factory’s owner, said he was struggling in the face of cheap imports.

“I was the first and now I am the last to make kaffiyehs in Palestine,” he said shaking his kaffiyeh-wrapped head in mock disbelief. “I am trying to persuade the Palestinian Authority that they must do more to protect local businesses like mine.”

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090313/FOREIGN/229359171/1011/NEWS

[MADem]

1. You can't tell the Chinese "We'll take your missile parts, but not your scarves"

The Chinese want that business, and they're going to undercut those prices until they've cornered the market.

And the PA? They'll bribe those guys into inaction.

[Hello_Kitty]

2. THEY'RE TALKING PROTECTIONIZM!!1! ZOMGZ!!11ELEVENTY!!

[IndianaGreen]

3. Militant fashion? A Palestinian scarf becomes hip-hop chic

Militant fashion? A Palestinian scarf becomes hip-hop chic

By Lawrence Delevingne

Tracy Thompson noticed the scarves early this year.

Young people in her neighborhood, Harlem, were wearing a checker-pattern cloth with tassels around their necks, like a bandana pulled down off the face.

A few even came into her clothing store, Connection One Fashion, which specializes in urban apparel, to ask if she carried them. No one knew their name, and several asked for “A-rab,” “Taliban” or “Bin Laden” scarves.

The epithets gave Thompson a hint of political connotations, but she decided to give them a try anyway. She bought the traditional black and white colors, plus purple, pink, green, red and a few other patterns and displayed them beginning last month for $10 apiece next to jeans, belts and sneakers. They almost sold out immediately.

“Everybody is wearing them on the street,” said Thompson, 41, whose main display in the storefront window is a female mannequin wearing a stylized purple hooded sweatshirt, a matching baseball hat, and a black and white kaffiyeh, the scarf’s traditional name. “They wear anything in style; they don’t even know the meaning.”

The kaffiyeh, traditionally a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, is gaining popularity in hip-hop fashion in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and other cities--and losing its potent symbolism in the process. Mainstream artists like Kanye West, Justin Timberlake and Chris Brown have sported the checkered Middle Eastern scarf in recent months, fueling a long-running debate on the commercial adoption of the politically charged square fabric popularized by Yasser Arafat, Hamas militants and others.

“People like Jay-Z, Jermaine Dupri and other mainstream hip-hop guys wearing it is the new development,” said Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas who has studied the kaffiyeh and its place in American fashion. “The tendency is towards diluting the political message.”

http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2008-04-29/delevingne-militantfashion

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. I have one from the factory that was given to me while I was there

It has a rustic feel to it I would not expect in the Chinese clones.