French-Palestinian European Parliament Member Rima Hassan recently posted the following photo and caption on X:
This Palestinian jacket (Taqsireh) from Bethlehem is older than Israel. pic.twitter.com/oLkMuHfU17
— Rima Hassan (@RimaHas) July 16, 2025
The post went viral, with already 1.2 million views and 37K likes.
This “x is older than Israel” argument is ridiculous. While the state of Israel was (re)established in 1948, the ancient Kingdom of Israel was established around 1050 BCE, following the unification of the Israelite tribes under a single monarchy. Well before that jacket (or “Mother Gaza” for that matter).
But let’s leave that aside for a moment, and focus on the specific Taqsireh claim.
According to the British Museum:
According to Shelagh Weir, Bethlehem women got their inspiration for the taqsireh from the uniform jackets of Ottoman and British officials and military personnel. The taqsireh was one of the chief articles in the kisweh (wedding trousseau) over a wide area of the southern hills of Palestine, from Ramallah in the north to the Hebron hills in the south. Regarding this particular jacket, Weir says that ‘Jackets such as this were made commercially by the women of Bethlehem for many villages in the Jerusalem and Bethlehem areas…This [type of] jacket might have been made for a Lifta woman, for the women of that village…liked a large couched design on the back — in contrast to Bethlehem women who preferred a more restrained border design (see Weir, 1989; 2006). She further states that ‘The…taqsireh…are usually lined with a bold checked cotton of European, probably British, origin’ (1989:42).
In other words, the Taqsireh was culturally appropriated – from colonialists no less!
So let’s review: Rima Hassan posts a colonial-inspired jacket to dunk on a nation-state that predates all of it by thousands of years – while accidentally showcasing a textbook case of cultural appropriation.
Congrats, Rima. You’ve managed to turn an anti-Israel talking point into a fashion faux pas and a history fail.
Maybe next time, read the label and the timeline.
