Green councillor’s portrait pulled from Hackney website after keffiyeh complaint
A newly elected Green party councillor’s official portrait photograph has been removed from the Hackney Council website after a complaint from a legal advocacy group about her wearing of a keffiyeh in the photograph.
Cllr Brenda Puech, who was elected to represent London Fields in May’s local elections, had her portrait photograph taken down on Monday following representations from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The image showed her wearing the patterned black and white cotton scarf, which has evolved into an international symbol of Palestinian nationalism and solidarity.
The councillor’s name and surgery times remain on the council website. A blank rectangle now sits where the photograph used to be.
‘Too offensive to publish’
Responding to the removal on Monday, Cllr Puech wrote on X: “A blank space on @HackneyCouncil website where my mugshot used to be! Fortunately I can still publicise my surgery times, though photo below is too offensive to publish. You now need refer to UKLFI media to see what I look like as they are quite happy to show the offensive image.”
She also reposted a comment describing UKLFI as “a threat to democracy and our way of life” and calling for the group to be proscribed.
The complaint
UKLFI said in a statement that the portrait “was causing distress to at least one Jewish resident of the borough”, and described the keffiyeh as “a divisive political symbol which many Jewish and Israeli residents associate with hostility towards Israel and, in some cases, with terrorist organisations and antisemitism”.
The group has previously filed complaints over the wearing of the scarf in other public-facing settings, arguing that it can cause alarm and distress to Jewish people, particularly since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, in which 1,195 people were killed, 828 of them civilians. Critics of the keffiyeh argue that its adoption by Hamas fighters has made it an emblem of the proscribed group.
Mayor distances herself
In a statement to the Hackney Citizen, the Mayor of Hackney, Zoë Garbett, said: “I want to be very clear that neither Cllr Puech or myself, nor anyone else in the Green councillor group, were part of the decision to remove the picture.
“I appreciate that many people are alarmed by this. It was a decision taken by officers, and one that has led me to raise my concerns.”
Hackney Council did not respond to a request from the Citizen for comment on whether the photograph would be reinstated.
I had one of these scarves when I was an art student in the 1980s. It was a ‘fashionable’ item worn by many students, most of whom knew little or nothing about the political situation in Gaza, & the annexation of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers.
So now they are telling us what we can and cannot wear . This is a normal piece of clothing worn by many Muslims all over the world and it is a racist attack on millions of people. Personally I get very distressed when I see jewish people dressed up in their outfits because it reminds me of dead children . Come on Hackney . Grow a pair . This is an attack on our democracy from a hostile power. And this group of lawyers are currently on official notice so just counter attack back .
I’m not the biggest fan of the Greens; I split my vote between Labour and the Greens. But objectively, this whole situation is a bit bizarre.
The Greens campaigned heavily on Palestine and presented themselves as willing to take a firmer stance than Labour. Yet now, with control of the council, we’re hearing the familiar line that officers made the decision and that policies and procedures must be followed, and national guidance says so and so. Labour said the same thing in response to demands to divest.
I appreciate the argument that the council may want to avoid litigation or complaints. But did anyone seriously think groups like UKLFI would simply sit back and not challenge pro-Palestinian gestures or decisions? Legal and political pushback was always going to be part of the equation.
And… over a picture on the councils website. Why is Hackney Council not allowing me to see my local councillor because some organisation says a keffiyeh incites hatred (of which no other legal definiton agrees)
If you are elected on these issues, voters reasonably expect you to stand by them when they’re controversial, not only when they’re cost-free. Otherwise, the distinction between the Greens and the Labour politicians they criticised starts to look a lot less clear.
oh for chrissakes…
yes, as we always say in this borough: it matters not for whom you vote, hackney fffing council always gets in…
and frankly, if mayor grabbit can’t get a grip on her feral admin-officers, how the blazes is she gonna put the puffin’ posse in the repair-department under manners?
notes on non-compliance with neo-liberal order:
1. given its mission is to bestow legal justification upon all israeli military action, uklfi is clearly a pretty radical organisation, by any democratic measure.
2. oh jeez, when the religion of zero-tolerance met the religion of net-zero…
…where can we buy tickets?
3. i’m sure, given the historically close and co-operative community-relations which exist between palestinians and jews in, for example, hackney’s cazenove ward, that the majority of stamford hill’s synagogue-going residents could not give two flying fancy-dressed sausages about gratuitous keffiyeh-wearing in the high hipster-heaven of london bloody fields.
4. ms tosley-nash is spot-on, of course: for most westerners, adornment in the keffiyeh is simply a trendy political affectation, and will hardly have members of the idf widdling in their bother-boots – save through uncontrollable laughter; i should confess that, being once a derogated follower of fashion, even i used to wear a neckscarf during the 80s, but not an actual keffiyeh – just a check one my nanna had bought me for christmas.
4. when resubmitting her official photo, i’m afraid there’s only one reasonable course of action to be taken by the contrary councillor puech: she’s just gotta go the whole hog and adopt the full niqab – i mean, she’s not exactly a looker, now is she?
5. given that the fascion-conscious fr*gs are itching to burn every scarf they deem ‘degenerate’ upon a huge bonfire of unsocial ideologies, i find councillor puech to be rather progressive.
what happened to hackney, bwoy?
s’a bit friggin’ dry these days, init?
is the wearing of union-jack scarves permitted within the council chamber?
is the wearing of union-jack scarves permitted within the borough’s borders?
does hackney council permit the wearing of oshankas, cossacks, kubankas, or papakhas within the council chamber or within the borough boundary?
is councillor putch allowed to wear union-jack knickers, t-shirts etc?
do saris and traditional african costume consitute politically permissible attire in downtown hackney?
i consider that council-clarification concerning the above-mentioned issues should be made a top-priortity.
and what about weirdo home-made hairdos? should they be allowed out in public?
god, i hate pink, myself…
…reckon it should be listed as a proscribed colour, in my honest opinion.
excuse me, madam…that cut cost £50 at the barber’s.
you got ripped-off, darlin’.
when it grows out, you’ll look like a chintzy lampshade in a bric-a-brac shop.
sorry, did i call the councillor ‘putch’? i meant ‘putsch’.
did i say ‘consitute’? i meant ‘constitute’.
do i care about crypto-neocon councillors wearing kefir? no i do not.
are posh bitch councillors bickering-on about fashion-choices, whilst schoolchildren kill each other with two-foot-long effing swords? what’s new?
hackney never changes.
let’s talk about lovely left-wing ltns, consciously designed as a mugger’s paradise complete with eco-friendly planters…
but let’s not talk about how – following butcher-biden’s neo-imperialist lead – prime ministers starmer, johnson, and sunak insidiously trained m23 blood-mineral-militiamen, in sandhurst, to commit unending, village-massacring, refugee-camp-shelling genocide in occupied eastern congo – and did so in order that the eu-orchestra of pan-african oppression might progressively rape africa of its mineral riches, and all human hope, in the noble neo-colonial cause of supplying apocalypse inc with the capitally cheap components required for its die-phones.
no, let’s not talk about the evil neo-liberal example being set, by our ‘progressive’ gangsta-government, to our skill-free and fatally impressionable youth.
let’s talk about rejoining the cia-controlled european union, and how doing so will enable our vampire-establishment’s ever more intimate investment in the banging business of industrialized black death, in a manner identical to that bravely pioneered by the royal african company of great british slave-traders – the bloody best in the world…
but let’s not talk about the cia–mi6 organized overthrow, in 2014, of the elected ukrainian government by far right nationalist nazi-adulating white supremacists, whom our western governments subsequently armed, trained, and sent to war against russia – following precisely the same playbook used by the british and american governments, during the second world-war, to send hitler’s nazis to war against the soviet union.
no, let’s not talk about the 2 million now dead as a direct result of the vicious vanity-war painstakingly planned by secretary-of-state clinton with president obama, and then duly prosecuted by president biden, with the eager psycho-subservient support of prime ministers boris johnson, liz truss, rishi sunak, and keir starmer.
let’s talk about fake pandemics, fake climate-emergencies, and fake claims of russian aggression against europe.
let’s talk about fake fffing news, baby.
So when a party campaigns on a particular issue (I personally wore my free Palestine badge on every canvassing round for the Greens) and they are elected with that policy a group of lawyers object because it is “offensive” where do these people get off? See you in court.