Jewish Groups Blast Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for Wearing Keffiyeh During Arab Heritage Event

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson donned a Palestinian keffiyeh this week to commemorate Arab American Heritage Month, drawing outrage from Jewish organizations in the Windy City. 

The Chicago mayor’s office held a celebration on Tuesday acknowledging the contributions and culture of Arab Americans. The event featured various members of the Arab American community, including the controversial Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Following the event, CAIR posted a photo on Instagram showing Johnson smiling while sporting a keffiyeh — a traditional Arab headdress which has been repurposed after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel as a symbol of support for the Palestinian cause. 

“Happy Arab Heritage Month! CAIR-Chicago sends our thanks to [Johnson] for hosting our community. It was a pleasure celebrating and highlighting the vast mosaic of Arab Heritage!” CAIR’s chapter in Chicago posted.

The Chicago Jewish Alliance (CJA), a group which advocates on behalf of the city’s Jewish community, lambasted Johnson’s conduct as “outrageous” and “moral bankruptcy.”

“For the mayor of Chicago to stand there — cloaked in a symbol now synonymous with Jewish bloodshed, flanked by an organization that justifies it — is more than tone-deaf. It’s a betrayal,” CJA said in a statement. “It tells Jewish Chicagoans: your pain doesn’t matter. Your dead don’t count. Your safety is negotiable.” 

CAIR responded by blasting CJA as a “hate group committed to the erasure of Palestinian identity” and argued that the Jewish advocacy group seeks “to normalize anti-Palestinian hatred necessary to justify the Israeli genocide against them.”

CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association'” of CAIR with Hamas.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that CAIR “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.'”

 CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad expressed public support for the Oct. 7 slaughter of 1,200 Jews and abduction of 250 others.

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” he said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”

Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) chief government affairs officer Lisa Katz also posted a statement calling Johnson’s public display of the keffyeh “painful.”

“While the keffiyeh is a traditional Middle Eastern garment with cultural significance, in recent decades it has often been used as a political symbol — particularly by extremist groups that promote violence against the Jewish people and seek the destruction of the State of Israel,” the group wrote. 

“We understand that Mayor Johnson may not have intended to cause harm, but at a time of historic antisemitic threat levels, including in Chicago, symbols matter. Their public use, especially by elected officials, carries weight and meaning,” she continued

Johnson, one of the most progressive mayors in the United States, has suffered a deteriorating relationship with Chicago’s Jewish community. He sparked fury in January 2024 when he cast the tie-breaking vote affirming the city council’s resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. In April 2024, Jewish community leaders rejected a meeting on antisemitism with Johnson, claiming that the mayor has not demonstrated “a modicum of empathy for the Jewish community.” In August 2024, Johnson criticized Israel’s military operations against Hamas as “genocidal.”

“What’s happening right now is not only egregious; it is genocidal,” Johnson said in an interview with progressive outlet Mother Jones last summer. 

Days later, the progressive mayor refused to backtrack or clarify his denunciation of Israel, arguing that his words reflected the egalitarian values of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

“You can condemn terrorism and call for peace. It’s actually very customary within our tradition here in Chicago. Dr. King called for that,” Johnson said. 

Johnson also came under fire in October 2024 for issuing a statement on the shooting of an Orthodox Jewish man in his city that refused to acknowledge his Jewish identity.

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