ON FLAGS AND THEIR MEANINGS

ON CANADA DAY, A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW SYMBOLS CAN MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

Give Peace a Chance this ain’t.

A couple of years ago — I think it was during the pandemic — one of the service clubs in my community bought hundreds of Canadian flags.

In June, they accept donations to raise the flag on your front lawn (or wherever) and now our whole suburb is awash in Canadian flags in anticipation of Canada Day. (Which is today — Happy Canada Day!)

But there is something I find distinctly un-Canadian — dare I say, in fact, quite American — about this fervent patriotic flag-waving.

It’s a bit of a mind-bender to argue that a proliferation of Canadian flags could be considered “American.” It is not so much the flag itself that seems un-Canadian — obviously, what could be more Canadian? — it is the impetus behind it. Canadians have not typically viewed ourselves as the flag-waving types. That’s what Americans do. We view ourselves, I think, as more quiet in our national pride.

This year’s more robust sense of patriotism may be a response to the US president’s tariffs, economic bullying and threats to Anschluss us. So there are extenuating circumstances.

But I raise this mostly to point out that symbols can mean different things to different people.

For example: I get a knot in my stomach whenever I see a Palestinian flag.

Is that fair? Maybe not. But I also think it’s reasonable to accept that a Palestinian flag is not always just a Palestinian flag.

Today, in Canada and plenty of other places, Palestinian flags are slapped on classroom walls, in email footers, in office cubicles, on car bumpers and (based on my recent visit to Europe) on any vertical space.

When any of the people sticking these Palestinian flags all over the place are called out for making Jews uncomfortable, you can depend on them to feign innocence and shock. Why, I just want to free Palestine!

Perhaps some do — the particularly stupid ones.

On October 6, that might have been a justifiable response. But, for the most part, those people weren’t posting Palestinian flags on October 6.

No. They started on October 7. And that has a very particular insinuation.

They might argue that it is the same as adding the Ukrainian flag, which many of us have been exhibiting since the invasion by Putin’s army.

Well, an obvious problem with this argument …

If they were concerned about autocratic thugs invading and attempting to subdue and take over an independent, democratic country, they would be flying the Ukrainian and Israeli flags—not the Palestinian one.

Posting a Palestinian flag after October 7 means something very different than posting it on October 6. In the post-October 7 world, that is an act of provocation. Let’s not pretend the people shoving Palestinian flags everywhere are unaware that they are subtly (or not so subtly) justifying atrocities.

A while back, I wrote about my visceral reaction to a social media post I saw that said, “Free Palestine means kill the Jews.”

Yikes! (That was my initial response.)

But inflammatory as it is, the idea came back to me when I saw reports of a rapper at the Glastonbury festival last weekend. Bobby Vylan, amid a scene of Palestinian flags and chants of “Free, free Palestine,” decided to take it a step further and chant “Death to the IDF,” referring to the Israel Defence Forces.

In case you think that there was something legitimate in that chant, given that the IDF is a military and therefore somehow a legitimate target (because they are not civilians) let’s just take this obscene logic to its illogical extreme.

When this war is over and Israelis have time to catch their breath, there will be an investigation into what went wrong on October 7, and why thousands of Israelis were left for hours to defend themselves with no backup from their military.

That not-insignificant reality aside, the IDF is the only thing standing between millions of Israeli civilians and the genocidal terrorists. So “Death to the IDF,” I don’t think it’s too much to extrapolate, is pretty much a call to leave Israelis to the whims of the October 7 crowd.

You might say, he’s just grasping at straws now, drawing one extrapolation from another.

But by this point, if we are splitting hairs over whether the people who chanted “Death to the IDF” wanted dead Jewish civilians or just dead Jewish soldiers, I think we’ve already turned a corner.

Here is the larger point: Vylan is the tip of an iceberg. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” have expressed on social media, in rallies, and by cheering on extremists, that the atrocities we saw on October 7 are, in their eyes, “justifiable resistance.”

So it is absolutely fair to say that that flag is now associated with people who want to kill Jews.

Maybe it’s “only” 5%, or “only” 1%, of people who chant “Free Palestine!” or who wave a Palestinian flag and mean “Kill the Jews!” But the other 95% or 99% are not calling them out.

Is that their responsibility?

Actually, yes.

If we belonged to a movement where even a tiny proportion of the adherents were conveying the message “Kill the [ethnic group]” or “Kill the [sexual minority]” we would demand that the reasonable people in the movement condemn and purge them.

Even if some of the people who are waving the flag do not subscribe to its most violent interpretations, they seem to have no qualms that it could be taken as support for atrocities.

Again, is it the responsibility of those posting the flag to be sensitive to how others might interpret it?

Well, here’s a thought: It is notable that probably almost everyone who is waving (or sticking or emoji-ing) the Palestinian flag self-defines as progressive or leftist of some description. This is precisely the demographic that would normally be sensitive to possible different interpretations.

For a crude example, if a politician or other public figure posted a “straight pride” flag on their socials, I’m guessing that within the first five minutes someone would accuse them of trying to kill trans kids.

But suggest that a Palestinian flag could be interpreted as a celebration of atrocities against Jews and expect outrage, accusations of hypersensitivity, and allegations that we are trying to “stifle” legitimate support for a “Free Palestine.”

And here we come to the crux.

If it were anyone other than Jews affected by a symbol that could — however remotely — be interpreted as a threat to their personal and collective identity, progressive people everywhere would be doing somersaults to remove that symbol, surround it with trigger warnings, mitigate traumatization of the affected group, de-escalate harm, launch trauma-informed responses, reduce relational taxation, re-centre anti-oppressive approaches and honor the lived experiences of those who express discomfort.

But because these are Jews who are hurting, the response is to rub vinegar in the wound. Suck it up buttercup. You’re not the only people who have suffered. Now you know how Palestinians feel. Your feelings aren’t facts. Sorry you take offense but Palestinian kids are dying.

Maybe the Palestinian flag is just a Palestinian flag. And sometimes a banana is just a banana. But the selectivity and exceptionalism demonstrated by ostensibly progressive activists when it comes to Jewish concerns — an approach that contradicts our behavior toward every other group on the planet — is more than a coincidence.

It’s a problem. And the fact that almost no progressive or “pro-Palestinian” activists see this as a problem is the biggest problem of all.