Keffiyahs, traditionally worn for religious reasons, are now sported
for fashion's sake by many girls in Southern California.
(photo courtesy of Foxtongue)

A University of Southern California student's political views shifted dramatically Sunday afternoon when she discovered her cotton neck scarf was actually a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

"It was like eating a giant 3 a.m. burrito, but in my mind," USC junior Ashley Vanderbilt said of the epifany. "I started to feel I had a food baby of the mind. Like a mind baby." Vanderbilt woke in her sorority bed that afternoon to the sound of CNN. Her roommate, Hadassah Greenberg, was watching on their suite's flat-screen television. 

Above the video of the Israeli Defense Force displaying keffiyeh-sporting Palestinians, Vanderbilt saw her own reflection in the glass covering her framed photograph of Johnny Depp playing the piano.   

"I'd been out till crazy late at the Kress and the last thing I remember was falling into a guy who looked like Mr. Clean," Vanderbilt said. "I was still wearing my keffie-thingie when I woke up, and in my reflection it was splattered in red." At this moment, Vanderbilt screamed, according to her roommate, Greenberg.

"I thought she thought she'd been roofied," Greenberg said. "That Mr. Clean--what's his actual name, Chad--was totally sketch. But then I told her to calm down and sniffed her Arafat thing and it turned out just to be some red-headed sluts she [had] puked out. And I was all like, 'Thank God, otherwise I would have had to unfriend Mr. Clean on Facebook, and I have better things to do, like catch up on House.'"

After giving Vanderbilt a Paxil to calm her nerves, Greenberg, a political science major, proceeded to explain the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. "First, I was just surprised. I mean, who knew they have Urban Outfitters in Baghdad?" Vanderbilt said in regard to the source of the Palestinians' headscarves. "But then I got mad. Why do the Israelis have to be so mean?  Why can't they just share?"

Later that afternoon, Vanderbilt learned from Wikipedia that the state of Israel was founded by Zionist Jews. "I didn't know they came from somewhere," Vanderbilt said. "I just thought they were like Methodists or something. Methodists who make movies and go to Chinese restaurants on Christmas."  

After a few days of research, Vanderbilt learned Jews were influential not only in Hollywood, but also in the worlds of politics, high finance, and academia. "I started to understand it was a massive conspiracy," she said. "They buy votes in Congress and keep our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund their war machine. And all because the Palestinians wear keffie scarves and eat cheeseburgers."

But the real blow for Vanderbilt was when she discovered her roommate was Jewish. 

"I've been betrayed," Vanderbilt said. "Here we've been living together for practically a year and never a word about how she's part of a people who are committing genocide. I feel like I've been sleeping with the enemy."      

"My name is Hadassah Greenberg," Greenberg said. "What kind of clue did she need? A Star of David tattooed across my forehead?"       

The two women continued to share a suite, but tensions were high. Especially after Vanderbilt divided the room with a full-length curtain made of keffiyeh-pattern fabric and began calling her roommate a two-timing kike.

"The anti-Semitic slurs I can deal with," said Greenberg. "The problem is that it's her side that has the window. And I was like, 'My daddy doesn't pay twelve thousand dollars a year so I can live in a dark half-room that stinks of my nutso roommate's hookah smoke."  

Vanderbilt recently purchased a prayer rug at the Hollywood World Market, and although she considered five times a day a tad excessive, she said she's begun to kneel on it nightly before bed and think happy thoughts about Palestinian children eating Double-Doubles, animal style, in peace.

"The only problem is that I always forget which way Mecca is, so I ask Hadassah--I mean, my bagel-dog roommate--and she always tells me."      

Vanderbilt has recently begun protesting daily outside USC's Hebrew Union College, wearing her red-stained keffiyeh and carrying a sign that reads "Let them eat cheeseburgers."  

HUC students do not seem at all disconcerted.

"She's kind of a babe," said Maury Blumenthal, a master's student in Jewish studies.  

"Yeah," said his friend and classmate Stanley Hersch. "She's what dad would call a shiksa.  Ignorance can be really sexy."

Vanderbilt has said she has no immediate plans to increase the scope of her anti-Zionist protest, but is apparently considering crashing a bar mitzvah. "One of those really expensive ones," she said.

"Maybe I'll make a CD with just machine-gun sounds, and I'll hide it in the church thing and then push play on the remote just when the kid is getting circumcised or whatever it is they do at those things. And maybe I'll meet Steven Tyler at the party, or whoever's in the band.  Just as long as it's not Leonard Cohen."