Hiding Behind Keffiyehs

This article first appeared in New English Review.

 I have long found it amazing how these pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protesters here in the US feel so strongly about their cause that most of them hide their faces behind keffiyehs when they show up to spout their hate against Israel and Jews. Instead of showing their faces, they choose to hide them with those obnoxious Palestinian headscarves. How many times do you see pro-Israel demonstrators hide their faces behind masks or some other type of face covering? I haven’t seen one-not in person, nor on TV.

Now comes the case of Anas Saleh, a 24-year-old guy from Staten Island who made headlines when he boarded a New York City subway this month and led his fellow Jew-haters in chants of, “Zionists raise your hands” and telling any “Zionists” (Jews) who might be on board that this was their chance to get off the train (implying something bad might happen to them if they don’t). On this occasion, while Saleh was wearing a keffiyeh, it was not covering his face, probably because he was accompanied by several other protesters.

Alas, true to form, once Saleh (with his face plastered all over the news) turned himself in, the bravado was gone. Images of him coming out of the station show him with his face covered by a Covid-era face mask and sheltered by his supporters, also covering themselves and Saleh with keffiyehs, face masks, and umbrellas as they arrogantly attempted to keep news photographers from recording the scene.

You have to hand it to this pro-Hamas crowd, be they in New York, Chicago, or the West Coast. They sure have chutzpah. Not enough to show their faces when they know cameras are around, of course. Instead of chutzpah, let’s just call it arrogance.

And their arrogance is wearing thin with the American public just as it is with the Europeans. On October 7, while the civilized world was recoiling in horror at what the barbarians of Hamas had done to over 1,200 innocent civilians, including women, children, and infants, these knuckleheads were celebrating the “resistance”. Then, as Israel punched back and their heroes from Hamas were taking to the tunnels like rats and ensuring that their own civilians were placed in harm’s way, the knuckleheads of our society got mad. As the Israelis began stacking up the “martyrs” of Hamas like stacks of cordwood, the outraged terrorist supporters took to the streets and the campuses. Now even the heads of universities (who have now been put under the spotlight) are starting to say enough is enough as they send in the campus police and outside reinforcements to take back the campuses from this rabble.

The civilized world is also seeing the pure Jew-hatred for what it is. As Jewish students on campuses have been bullied and Jews assaulted on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and other American cities, as Jews in Europe are being gang raped and butchered by Muslim migrants, decent citizens see it for what it is. These pro-Hamas supporters, demonstrators, and rioters, are nothing but thugs. They hate Israel, they hate America, they hate Jews, and they hate the West in general. Both radical Muslims and anarchists of every background, they spit on our values and try to remake Western civilization into a weird combination of fundamentalist Islam mixed with outright Nazism. 

It has taken several years for us to wake up to the fact that we have a resurgence of anti-Semitism on our hands. A resurgence that began on our campuses courtesy of the anti-Israel crowd of students and faculty posing as educators. Now it is front and center. Oh sure, some on the left are still trying to pin most of the blame on white nationalists, Trump supporters, and the right in general. But their lies don’t hold water. Most of us in America see it, the Canadians see it, the Australians see it, and the Europeans see it. And we are disgusted. The conservative British journalist Douglas Murray puts it succinctly when he says that he does not want to share his society with people like this. He could not be more correct. However, unless outrages like what we have witnessed in the New York subway are committed by non-citizens (who can be deported), it is left to our justice system to deal with these characters. And of course, in New York and Los Angeles, two of the worst cities in the nation in this regard, we have to rely on prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and George Gascon respectively to seek justice. I doubt that these two are sufficiently disgusted yet.

But to sum it all up, Anas Saleh and his ilk have given the nation a true picture of what the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas movement is all about- Jew-hatred and cowardice. It’s one thing to lower your keffiyeh down around your neck when you are surrounded by like-minded thugs. It is quite another when you cover your face when the cops and media are around, and you are the prisoner rather than somebody’s tormenter.