Urban Outfitters Stops Selling Kaffiyehs as 'Antiwar' Scarves

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January 17, 2007 | 5:11 a.m.

You think Jimmy Carter has problems. Yesterday on the progressive Jewish blog, Jewschool, Mobius noted that Urban Outfitters was selling kaffiyehs—the Arab scarf popularized by Yasir Arafat—as "antiwar scarves":

In hipster enclaves such as Berlin and Brooklyn, the kaffiyeh is so ubiquitous it's already passe [and] as a fashion item it is viewed by many in the Palestinian solidarity movement as a trivialization of the Palestinian struggle... Well, the kaffiyeh just got 10 TIMES MORE PASSE and 10 TIMES MORE TRIVIALIZED, thanks to Urban Outfitters

I went to the Urban Outfitters site today and now you can't even see the picture of the scarf; and the retailer announces:

Due to the sensitive nature of this item, we will no longer offer it for sale. We apologize if we offended anyone, this was by no means our intention.

Score another victory for Abe Foxman! This is actually fascinating as a symbol. Because truly, the antiwar movement in this country is now divided/stymied/unable-to-coalesce because of the unwillingness of many liberal Democrats to identify the Israeli Occupation as a source of problems in the Middle East.