Move over Old Navy, make way for US Army

Bozo Erectus

Master Baker
Joined
Jan 22, 2003
Messages
22,389
'Clothes dont make the militant, but everyone will know who 'da man' is when you step out wearing our geniune US Army surplus uniforms! Dont just make a political statement, make a fashion statement when you blow up. Come see me, Crazy Mahmood for all your jihad fashion needs. Its like having an Uncle in the carpet bombing business!"

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Wearing a green Hamas headband, waving a Hamas flag, swinging a Kalashnikov and chanting for Israel's demise, Bassem Shorah looks to be a prototypical Palestinian militant.

His olive green shirt, however, tells a different story. It's a spot-on replica of those worn by soldiers in the United States Army, replete with combat patches and unit designations.

Though he's a committed Islamist activist in a movement that denounces the United States for supporting Israel and occupying
Iraq, Shorah proudly sports what has become the latest trend in Palestinian street wear: US military apparel.

"This is the new fashion in the market," says Shorah. "It's a show of force, because the US army is powerful. It's a symbol of strength and of our refusal to put down arms."

The US army knock-offs are part of a broader trend here. After six years of an uprising against Israel and with Gaza heading once again for confrontation with the Israeli army, militancy has become a dominant theme in Palestinian culture.

Particularly now, as Gaza's 1.4 million inhabitants sit up each night waiting anxiously for an Israeli invasion aimed at rescuing a captured soldier, air strikes and tank shells are woven into the fabric of daily life.

The masked, fatigue-clad militants who roam Gaza's streets in the name of resistance to the Jewish state are lionized by Palestinian youth.

On their television sets these young people see images of US soldiers in Iraq, and they view them as the ultimate symbol of military might.

"People look in the streets and they see gunmen, they watch TV and see the US Army, and they say, 'I want to be a militant, too. I want that shirt,'" says Omar Bilbaysi, who owns three clothing shops in downtown Rafah.

"The word 'US Army' doesn't matter," he adds. "What matters is that they're wearing military clothes."

Across Gaza, retailers say demand for military wear, US Army and otherwise, is booming.

Nearly every clothing store in Gaza is well-stocked with the sort of fashions one would expect to find at an army surplus store: camouflage shirts and pants and black paramilitary vests with pockets for ammo cartridges and hand grenades.

"The culture in Gaza now is very militant," says Ayman Jarbua, another clothing retailer here. "The youth admire the militants who are fighting in the resistance and they want to dress like them."

The trend is not limited to clothing. At barber shops across the
West Bank and Gaza young Palestinians are demanding what's known as a "Marines," meaning a high and tight crew cut, the kind that is mandatory for US Marines.

Similarly, Abu Sim, a rank and file gunman in the Popular Resistance Committees' armed wing, has wrapped the barrel of his Kalashnikov with desert camouflage padding, another nod to US military fashion.

"I saw a US Marine sniper on TV doing the same thing," he says. "It's natural to copy the US military because they are powerful and so are we."

Still others, unable to read the English words emblazoned across their chest, don US Army garb without a clue.

"I just bought it because I like the way it looks, but I'll burn it now as soon as I go home," says Ibrahim Abu Zarif, 20, when told during a pro-Hamas rally that the patch on his left breast pocket says US Army.

In the 1990s, when peace with Israel seemed imminent, Palestinian youths looked elsewhere for role models. They emulated pop singers such as Iraqi legend Kazem Saher. Like the dapper vocalist, stylish young Palestinians once preferred dark suits with wide collared shirts unbuttoned at the top.

"Then, it wasn't the time of intifada," says Wasim al-Fagawy, a thoughtful 21-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University as he watches a Hamas rally rumble down a back street in southern Gaza.

"Now, times have changed and militancy is in the air everywhere."

Even women's and baby clothing stores stock generous racks of camouflage.

"It's normal in a land that knows only wars to find people attracted to this style," says Abu al-Hassan, a customer in Jarbua's store.

Hassan says he is a Hamas loyalist who hangs propaganda posters for the organization in his free time. Today, however, he's shopping for his wife: pink camouflage pants with a US Air Force logo on the front pocket.

At Baby City, a children's apparel shop owned by Bilbaysi, a poster of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin hangs on the door while the display window lures shoppers with tyke-sized fatigues, a US Army patch across the front.

"The people love their little kids to be dressed in military clothes," says Bilbaysi. "They want to teach the children and prepare them so they will be ready for the battle that lies ahead when they grow up."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2006070...BQB7xes0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

Its one of those stories that you can either laugh at or cry about. I like laughing better:crazyeye:
 
Such a peace-loving group of folks.
 
Stop the culture war now millitant islam :D :D :D
I heard osama is mad about the western presnce in the middle east ... but he's mostly mad about the coke and the pepsi .... and the cleavage in the movies that makes him think ....that really pisses him off.
Now this? I think we will have completed the culture war when we open up a few more night clubs in the sunni triangle

Stay tuned
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
After all, everyone knows the US's greatest weapons aren't nukes or bombers but Coke and McDonalds. That is why everyone dislikes us so . . .
It's true when the Iatolla (sp?) Humani was in france in the 70s he demanded a traditonal toilet, a modern one just would not due it had to be a hole in the ground.

On Osama's cousin (A PBS special) they had this one guy talk about getting beatin by ole uncle osama for giving into wetern influince by drinking coke, No joke.
 
So they see the US in Iraq and think they the the pinicle of military might. So they copy the US dress as a show of force. They hate us but they idealize and respect our military. Along time ago someone said the only thing that part of the world understands is force if you want them to understand you will have to beat it into them. I say the fear us and Isreal should make them fear Isreal to.
 
Reminds me somewhat of how US troops found NYPD bumper stickers on some Iraqi military trucks at the start of the war.
 
I am very suspicious.

It reads like a cover story for the Palestinian militants to acquire disguises
to pass themselves off as US servicemen and then attack them.
 
Elta said:
It's true when the Iatolla (sp?) Humani was in france in the 70s he demanded a traditonal toilet, a modern one just would not due it had to be a hole in the ground.

On Osama's cousin (A PBS special) they had this one guy talk about getting beatin by ole uncle osama for giving into wetern influince by drinking coke, No joke.

I don't mean this in offence to you, but his name is Ayatollah Kholmeni.

It is rather crazy that these people, like Kholmeni and Bin Laden reject modern conveniences so. Of course, Muslims have been doing this for a thousand years, they've always rejected the ideas of the rest of the world. When the Muslims conquered Isahafan around 700 AD, the troops came to their general with a great amount of Arab knowledge: books, containing many lost Roman secrets, and things like mathematics, algebra, astronomical data, all sorts of fantastic information. The general said to his men" burn it all, or cast it into the sea; it is of the infidels; if it is harmful, then we are saved from it, if it is wisdom, then Allah has shown us better."

This is the manner of thinking that is responsible for the backward ways of the Muslim World, and proof that their xenophobia runs far deeper than a bottle of Coke or a Big Mac. It just happens that now we (the West) are the ones who are ahead, and as our culture tries to spread into their part of the world, they know nothing other than fighting that which is not theirs. It is in their blood and in their soul, not in their head. That is why this War against Militant Islam is going to be so hard.
 
tomsnowman123 said:
This seems hyprocritical. If they spread the image of US power and might, I don't think President Bush will complain, no matter how they do it.
But them waging a guerilla/terror war in dressed as we are, wearing US ARMY on their chests as they blow up little Israeli kids, look very bad, and identifies those acts in people's minds with the US Army. This is far worse than you understand.
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
It's not true that the Muslim world has been backward for 1000 years. More like a century or so. Before that they were often more scientifically advanced and religiously tolerant than Europe.
No, the Muslim world has been behind since the Mongols burned Baghdad to the ground, I assure you.
 
Cheezy the Wiz said:
No, the Muslim world has been behind since the Mongols burned Baghdad to the ground, I assure you.

Tell that to the Ottomans . . .after all they weren't killing or even persecuting members of other sects when that was all the rage in Europe.
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
Tell that to the Ottomans . . .after all they weren't killing or even persecuting members of other sects when that was all the rage in Europe.
The Ottomans were on top because of their leadership, not because they were more advanced than the West. Great Sultans like Sulieman the Magnificent, and Osman are what allowed the Ottomans to build an empire, which, as I assume you don't know, began the long process of falling apart before men like this even died. The only reason their Emipre persisted so long was that no one came along with significant interest in it for so long.
They got most of their building techniques from the Byzantines anyhow, who were defnintely Western.
The fact that they practiced religious toleration eventually does not mean that they were not a degenerate civilization.
 
No, I know a lot about the Ottoman Empire. They may have had problems, but they couldn't be categorized as backwards (which is the word you used originally). Neither were the Mughals, for that matter.
 
The Mughals for some reason don't quite fit in with this, I admit, they are an exception. The Mughals were for a while the most advanced, perhaps it is more in the Indian nature to foster science and the thinking of others than it is an Arab thing. Perhaps it is more an Arab thing, as the Turks were definitely ahead of them too( I mean, they did conquerer most of the Arab world), even if still behind the West.
 
Top Bottom