I have a confession to make: when those Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tore down a Palestine flag in Amsterdam a few weeks back, I let out a little cheer. Yes, I know the boisterous lads did other things in the Dutch capital that were definitely bad. The left never tires of telling us what thugs and brutes these young Israelis allegedly are. But that one act, that tiny revolt against the omnipresence of the Palestine colours in the cities of Europe – that I welcomed.
If you want to be radical, wave the Israel flag
For two reasons. First, because it made perfect sense to me that Israelis might feel vexed and possibly even distressed by the sight of this flag flapping from the balcony of every smug residence in the capitals of this continent.
After all, this was the flag under which hundreds of their fellow citizens were raped, tortured and murdered just a year ago. To the fashionably Israelophobic of the Euro activist classes, waving the Palestine flag might just be a convenient way to prove your moral worth to your fellow intimates in right-thinking society. But to Israelis the flag can prick awful memories of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. I connected with the passion with which those young fellows dragged down that flag. Thuggish? Maybe. Understandable? Definitely.
The second reason I yelped with approval is because there are just too many of these flags now, right? They’re everywhere. Take a walk round London and you’ll see more Palestine flags than Union flags. You might even see more Palestine flags than Pride flags. If someone from the 1950s got time-warped to London 2024, their first remark would be: ‘Sh*t, we got conquered?’
The Palestine colours are inescapable. The middle classes drape them over their shoulders when they bravely take a break from Saturday brunching to march against the Jewish State. They flutter from lampposts. There isn’t a campus in the land that is not adorned in the red, black, white and green of Palestine.
There are TikTok videos advising the young on how to ‘Palestine’ their outfits. How about matching a red beret with a green blouse and black trousers so that everyone you encounter will know what an amazingly moral person you are?
Don’t get me started on the keffiyeh, the uniform of the self-righteous, the sartorial signifier of political rectitude. There are posh white kids out there who spent years howling ‘Cultural appropriation!’ at people like Katy Perry for putting her hair in cornrows who now parade through the streets dressed like Arabs.
Now the trade unions are encouraging people to show up to work in the Palestine colours. Yesterday was ‘Workplace Day of Action for an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza’. The TUC (Trades Union Congress) says workers should wear ‘red, green [and] black or a Palestinian keffiyeh’. How about taking photos to ‘share on social media’, it suggests. Of course. That’s the whole point of donning the Palestine colours: to take a preening pic and put it online.
This has got to be one of the TUC’s worst ideas ever. And that’s saying something. What about our Jewish colleagues? Do their feelings count for nought? Some on the left scoff at the idea that Jews might feel offended by the sight of the Palestine flag. It’s a scoffing that would carry more weight if it wasn’t coming from the kind of people who take fright at everything from un-PC jokes to gender-critical feminism. Listen, if you can feel offended by JK Rowling referring to people with penises as men, then Jews can feel put out by the flag under which a thousand of their co-religionists were butchered last year.
I know what people will say: displaying the Palestine colours is a way of showing solidarity. I don’t buy it
I know what people will say: displaying the Palestine colours is a way of showing solidarity with a beleaguered people. I don’t buy it. I think these ubiquitous flags – these eyesores, to be frank – have far more to do with us than with Palestinians. Not content with commandeering the keffiyeh and making it the hot must-have of polite society, now the left seizes the Palestine flag and makes it a thing the city elites might hang from their windows so their neighbours will know they’re Good.
It’s less about solidarity than a kind of cultural supremacism. Like the Pride flag, the Palestine flag has become a banner under which the influencer classes outline and enforce their supposedly superior beliefs. Its omnipresence feels oppressive. First and foremost to Jews, but also to those of us who’ve long since tired of our towns and cities being turned into soapboxes by an activist class that loves nothing more than impressing its moral dominion over us little folk.
There’s an ironically conformist bent to these ostentatious displays of the Palestine colours. Radical? Come off it – it’s the means with which one proves one’s worthiness for the dinner-party circle. If you want to be radical, wave the Israel flag. People will splutter and rage and manhandle you. They will grab your flag and run off with it. They will destroy it like some Dark Ages hysteric burying a blasphemous icon. Try it – it’s wonderful.
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