Jesse Kline: Keffiyeh-wearing kindergarten teachers create hostile environment at Toronto school

National Post

17-05-2025

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This is not the first time something of this nature has happened. To commemorate the anniversary of the Quebec mosque shooting at the end of January, some classes attended a TDSB-sanctioned talk by children's author and illustrator Hatem Aly, who's listed as a participant in a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions. And the day after Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 massacre, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, two kindergarten teachers showed up for work wearing keffiyehs.
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As I noted in an email to the principal at the time, the keffiyeh is 'an overtly political symbol with roots in Islamic terrorism that has become associated with the vile antisemitic rallies on Canadian streets, in which protesters regularly call for the genocide of the Jewish people and have led to violent attacks against Jewish institutions, including schools. It is both divisive and deeply offensive and should have no place in the classroom.'
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Indeed, although the scarf is a traditional Bedouin garment, it has long been associated with violent Palestinian attacks against the British, who controlled the area after the First World War, and the region's Jewish inhabitants. It was used to hide the identities of Palestinian guerrillas when they launched assaults against the Brits in the 1930s. It was popularized in the West in 1969 as the garment worn in a widely circulated photo of Leila Khaled, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist who was one of the hijackers of TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv.
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In more recent decades, it became associated with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a man who turned down numerous viable offers for peace and Palestinian statehood in favour of two bloody intefadehs. And nowadays, it is the fashion choice of the thugs who occupy university campuses, picket outside synagogues and in Jewish neighbourhoods, and fill western streets with calls to 'globalize the intefadeh' and wipe out all the Jews 'from the river to the sea.'
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Although the principal seemed genuinely concerned with parents' objections to keffiyehs in the classroom, she insisted she had no control over her staff's work attire and suggested reaching out to Erin Altosaar, TDSB superintendent of education. Altosaar, however, also insisted that the 'keffiyeh is a symbol of cultural identity and we do not question … the cultural identities of others.'
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A TDSB spokesperson defended the more recent heritage month incident along similar lines, stating that, 'Palestinians (Gaza, West Bank) are considered to be a part of West Asia, including the Levant region, and as such cultural attire and other artifacts from that part of the world were represented in the Asian Heritage Month display.' (Though one can imagine the backlash from displaying an Israeli flag or Israel Defence Forces logo for Asian Heritage Month, even though Israel is technically part of West Asia, as well.)
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School administrators, it would seem, are more than happy to sweep issues like this under the rug and pretend as though the problems caused by their wholesale buy-in to the identity-politics craze and blurring of the lines between education and activism don't exist. But in this case, it would appear as though the keffiyeh was used, not as a means of expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people, but of antagonizing the local Jewish community and politicizing Jewish cultural expression.
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This incident was orchestrated by those at the school who apparently could not stand the thought of elementary kids celebrating their culture without injecting Middle Eastern politics into the fray. It was aided and abetted by a school administrator who was unwilling to stand up to her own staff, creating a culture of fear among faculty, who are genuinely afraid to speak out. And we can be quite sure that similar things are taking place at public schools right across the country.
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Unfortunately, the school board is unlikely to do anything to address issues such as this. While the TDSB's inquiry into the field trip to an anti-Israel rally acknowledged 'the deleterious effect on young minds of hearing chants that troubled them,' it spent more time criticizing the media for its coverage of the incident and painting the 'TDSB's Indigenous communities' as the true victims.
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