Van Jones Compares Pro-Palestinians Wearing Keffiyehs To A White Person ‘With A Confederate Flag In Harlem’
LAPD officers clash with anti-Israel protesters wearing keffiyehs gathered outside the Adas Torah Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles on June 23, 2024. | Source: DAVID SWANSON / Getty
Political pundit Van Jones is on the receiving end of a backlash after he compared a symbol of the Palestinian cause to a symbol of racial terror in the U.S.
During an interview on CNN on Monday, Jones responded to questions about the violence that broke out last weekend between pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters outside of a synagogue in Los Angeles.
Jones condemned the violence as “unacceptable” and suggested the pro-Palestinian protesters had straddled the lines of antisemitism – if not crossed it outright – for going to a Jewish neighborhood and targeting the synagogue.
Jones encouraged the pro-Palestinian protesters to instead channel their energy toward the U.S. policy, not the Jewish people as a whole.
“You don’t bumrush a Jewish neighborhood and run up on a synagogue,” Jones said. “That’s not protesting a policy, you’re protesting a people.”
Jones called the action of the pro-Palestinian protesters “a pogrom,” which Merriam Webster defines as “an organized massacre of helpless people” … “specifically: such a massacre of Jews.”
Jones continued: “I haven’t seen any Jewish people running up on mosques.”
Van Jones speaks on stage during the 2024 Bezos Courage and Civility Awards on March 14, 2024, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Kevin Mazur / Getty
It was in that context that Jones went on to compare wearing a keffiyeh – the iconic Palestinian scarf – as a pro-Palestinian protest to someone wielding a Confederate flag, a pro-slavery symbol.
“If you show up there wearing a keffiyeh, you show up there with your face covered, you show up chanting ‘from the river to the sea,’ that would be just like a white person running up with a Confederate flag in Harlem,” Jones concluded. You’re not trying to start a conversation. You’re trying to start a fight!”
Watch the exchange below.
CNN – 6/24/2024 – @VanJones68 comments on the recent violence at pro-Palestinian protest in L.A
"If you show up there wearing a keffiyeh…you show up chanting from the river to the sea, that would be just like a White person running up with a confederate flag in Harlem…you're… pic.twitter.com/Og4kuyiKvI
— CaseStudyQB – #CeaseFireNOW (@CaseStudyQB) June 24, 2024
Notably, neither of the CNN anchors pushed back on Jones’ assertion that wearing a keffiyeh in a Jewish neighborhood is “just like” a white person with a Confederate flag in a historically Black community.
Conversely, social media users were quick to point out the false equivalence that Jones made on CNN.
“That people in the mainstream media and politicians are calling a keffiyeh a hate/terror symbol is I think the most racist thing I have ever seen in my life,” one account on X, formerly Twitter, posted in response to the clip.
“The protestors were quite literally protesting ‘policy’ not ‘a people,’” Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders’ former press secretary, wrote on X to Jones. “You have an obligation to know the facts before you go on TV & spread the kind of propaganda that is getting Palestinian-Americans attacked across the country.”
Grassroots civil rights group RootsAction called Jones’ comparison “false & incendiary” and lamented it as an example of “how mainstream media manufactures more racist anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab hate.”
Activist Muna AbuSulayman said it was “shocking” how the “Palestinian right to resist occupation (enshrined in international law) is likened to slave ownership” and suggested the comment was not borne out of ignorance because Jones “knows better.”
Protesters carrying a “Palestinians Lives Matter” sign walk past a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag on Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, Michigan, during a rally and march calling for a ceasefire on October 28, 2023. | Source: JEFF KOWALSKY / Getty
To be sure, the keffiyeh is a symbol of humanitarianism that also long represents resisting the Israeli occupation in Gaza – an occupation that has resulted in Israel killing more Palestinians in 2023 than any other year since 1948, according to the Middle East Monitor.
On the flip side, a Confederate flag – an unequivocal hate symbol of racial terror – was first raised in 1860 after nearly a dozen U.S. states seceded from the union in an effort to protect the centuries-old American institution of slavery, which is decidedly not a humanitarian cause.
Further, as the ADL tells it, “Organizations such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans adopted the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage but the flag also served as a potent symbol of slavery and white supremacy, which has caused it to be very popular among white supremacists in the 20th and 21st centuries. This popularity extends to white supremacists beyond the borders of the United States.”
Jones doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to addressing the conflict in Gaza that critics call an Israeli-led “genocide.”
Back in November, Jones was booed while giving a speech at the March for Israel rally in Washington, D.C., where he notably came under fire for encouraging people to “take a stand against Muslims” — a statement he would later walk back and blame on misspeaking.
NOW: The crowd at "March for Israel" started chanting “no ceasefire” over @VanJones68. pic.twitter.com/b7rxtu35e8
— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) November 14, 2023
This is America. And this is also Van Jones.
SEE ALSO:
Van Jones Expresses Sympathy For Donald Trump Because He ‘Looks Sad’ During Arraignment
Van Jones Slammed For Saying Black People Must Change ‘Lifestyle Choices’ Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
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