The Israeli Left has a serious flag problem. Well, a problem with the Israeli flag to be precise. The one with the six-pointed blue star. Not the ISIS flag.
The Left intensely dislikes people who wave Israeli flags, although I think it would be okay with those radical anti-Trump protesters waving Mexican and Iranian flags. At the Israeli Left’s own rallies, like one widely reported recently, one sees oodles of Stalinist red flags, lots of PLO flags, and sometimes one may see Hamas flags, but no Israeli flags.
In a few famous cases, the Left’s contempt for the flag goes well beyond that. A few months ago, the ultra-leftist Israeli “artist” and “activist” Ariel Bronz appeared at an assembly sponsored by the anti-Israel Haaretz newspaper and pranced about the stage with an Israeli flag inserted in his rear end. Haaretz approved and hailed the behavior as the epitome of democracy and patriotism. In an earlier incident one Natali Cohen Vaxberg, also a leftist activist and actress, posted on the web videos of her relieving herself (number two, to be precise) on the Israeli flag. More courageous defense of freedom of speech, squealed Haaretz and its leftist amen choir in delight.
The latest twist in the Left’s jihad against the flag has to do with plans by participants in the upcoming Jerusalem Reunification Day festivities to wave it. This has triggered horrific anger among the enlightened Left. They are particularly irate because celebrants plan to march all over Jerusalem waving flags, including in all parts of the Old City.
That is simply fascism, scream the Leftists, especially because the celebrants will walk through the “Moslem Quarter” of the Old City. Flying flags under the noses of these “occupied” Arabs is intolerable oppression, even though these Arabs have Israeli citizenship and are welcome to join the celebrations and wave flags with the others if they wish.
So now a group of about 100 radical leftists has placed an ad in the press this week, paid for by you-know-who, denouncing plans to wave Israeli flags in Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day. The ad says that as peace seekers the signatories demand that the government and police prohibit the waving of flags in the “Muslim Quarter” of the Old City, which – they add – is near the Temple Mount and the day will be close to Ramadan. It should be noted that the signers do not express any opposition to PLO, Hamas, or ISIS flags flying on the PLO-controlled Temple Mount itself, nor in any leftist street rallies anywhere else in the country.
So who are the brave souls devoted to freedom of speech and true democracy who have signed this petition demanding the suppression of Israeli flag waving? Some of them are notorious activists in the movement to create a world boycott against Israel in the name of BDS = Boycott-Divest-Sanctions warfare against Israel, such as Tel Aviv University’s purple-haired faculty dingbat Rachel Giora or anti-Israel ex-diplomat Alon Liel.
Some others are also Tenured Extremists. One signer is Liel’s constant sidekick, the “Peace Now” professor Amiram Goldblum from the Hebrew University, who has devoted much of his career to demonizing Israel as a fascist apartheid regime while he himself opposes freedom of speech and democracy in Israel and claims Judaism itself is the root of all that is wrong in the Middle East. He is joined by Ze’ev Sternhell from the Hebrew University, a Marxist anti-Zionist who once called for terrorists to murder Jewish settlers and wants student Zionists to be suppressed because they are “fascists.” A few dozen other radical leftist sheep join in the herd to sign.
The rage among leftists over the flying of the flag on Jerusalem Reunification Day is actually a thin disguise for what really is bothering the Left and what its real agenda is. The Left is not really opposed to flag waving but to Jerusalem Reunification. It wants Israel back behind its pre-1967 Auschwitz borders, with the Western Wall a Muslim shrine in “Palestine’s” hegemony, and with tens of thousands of rockets raining down upon the rump Israel that will temporarily remain if the Left ever manages to impose its agenda on the country.