I found the photo in a photocopied yearbook and felt the room tilt for a moment. There he was: a young Alex Karp, reclining on a stone ledge, wearing a keffiyeh like a faded banner from a past you didn’t expect. If you follow Palantir today, that quiet image collides with a much louder present.
I’ve chased small contradictions in public lives long enough to know they tell bigger stories. You and I can read a scarf, a quote, a corporate X post, and map a trajectory—if we’re willing to look.
On a Haverford yearbook page, a student lounges in a keffiyeh.
The image appears in Sharon Weinberger’s forthcoming The Valley of Death and it’s simple: Karp, relaxed, the keffiyeh draped like a scarf. The keffiyeh’s political meaning is layered—worn as solidarity for Palestinian identity and resistance ever since Yasser Arafat popularized it at the United Nations in the 1970s.
That yearbook snapshot is not just nostalgia. It’s evidence of early political posture: Weinberger calls him “an active participant” in campus protests against racism at Haverford. Small campus choices can become public signposts decades later.
Why was Alex Karp wearing a keffiyeh in college?
Karp’s keffiyeh reflected the student activism of the era—public protest against racism and a gesture of Palestinian solidarity. It’s the kind of college-era statement that, for many, marks identity formation rather than a manifesto of lifelong policy.
On Palantir’s X feed, the company posted “Palantir stands with Israel.”
Days after the October 2023 Hamas attack, Palantir’s official account sided swiftly with Israel, and the company later signed a January 2024 deal to provide Israeli authorities with advanced technology for war-related missions, according to Bloomberg’s coverage and statements from Palantir exec Josh Harris.
That public posture sits alongside hard numbers and investigations: PBS reported a Palestinian death toll exceeding 73,000, and a UN commission concluded last September that Israel’s actions in Gaza met the threshold of genocide. Those facts change how corporate support reads in the public square.
Karp himself has invoked his Jewish identity in public interviews and framed the conflict in moral terms. In a 2024 CNBC interview he described the fight as a battle over whether the West’s values prevail—a framing that, for many, reads as a claim of cultural superiority.
The contrast between an activist scarf and a CEO’s wartime rhetoric is striking; the person you knew in a campus photo can feel like a different instrument in a new orchestra—or a cultural compass that now points elsewhere.
Has Palantir supported Israel in the Gaza war?
Yes. Palantir publicly backed Israel immediately after the October 2023 attack and later formalized support with a deal to provide “advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” per Palantir documents and Bloomberg reporting. The company’s statements and business moves make the position more than rhetorical.
In Sharon Weinberger’s book, a yearbook photo resurfaces on the page.
Weinberger reproduces the image and notes Karp’s campus activism—tiny acts that suggest an early political orientation. You see a student who protested racism; years later you see a CEO whose statements and contracts place him clearly on one side of an armed conflict.
There are more than optics at play. After October 2023, Americans reported hate incidents and targeted violence: NPR covered the 2023 Vermont shooting of three college-aged men of Palestinian descent—two wearing keffiyehs—who survived a brutal attack. Those events give the keffiyeh contemporary stakes beyond symbolism.
When leaders and their companies take sides in war, they reshape the meaning of former protest symbols. The scarf in that yearbook is both an artifact and a question mark—how do earlier convictions reconcile with today’s power and influence?
What does the keffiyeh symbolize?
The keffiyeh is both traditional Arab dress and a political emblem. For many it signals Palestinian solidarity and resistance; for others it’s a cultural garment without political intent. Context matters: on a college quad it reads one way; in a modern conflict it reads another.
I’m not here to decide Karp’s moral ledger. I’m inviting you to notice the tension between a photograph and a CEO statement, between campus protest and corporate contracts. You can judge the shift as evolution, contradiction, or something more strategic—but either way it’s now a public matter with real consequences.
Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment; Weinberger’s The Valley of Death reaches bookstores later this month. You can follow the documents—Bloomberg, CNBC, PBS, NPR, and the UN report—to build the record yourself. So what does a keffiyeh in a yearbook mean when the man who wore it now signs deals that affect life and death—how do you reconcile the two?
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