For some it is a image of id. For others, a problem to the state. NPR’s Itay Stern stories on the controversy over the Palestinian flag in Israel.
PIEN HUANG, HOST:
In Israel, displaying the Palestinian flag can draw the eye of police. Authorities have confiscated flags and detained demonstrators, saying the image can threaten public order. Critics name it an assault on free speech. NPR’s Itay Stern stories from Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing in non-English language).
ITAY STERN, BYLINE: Protesters play the Palestinian anthem at this Nakba Day rally at Tel Aviv College final month. Nakba, or disaster, is the Palestinian time period for the displacement of tons of of hundreds of Palestinians throughout the 1948 struggle that erupted across the creation of the state of Israel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
STERN: College students shout pro-Palestinian chants and maintain indicators and symbols within the colours of the Palestinian flag. However one factor is lacking – the flag itself. Police warned organizers to not deliver it.
ALEEN NASSRA: When you have any Palestinian flag, we’ll come and take it, and we’ll have arresting. We wish to defend our college students. However they’re forbidding us from holding the flag.
STERN: Aleen Nassra helped manage the rally. She is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a neighborhood that makes up about 20% of the inhabitants. Close by, Siba Ayadat holds an ukelele painted in white, inexperienced, purple and black of the Palestinian flag. She says the restrictions transcend a flag.
SIBA AYADAT: They attempt to inform us that our lives matter much less, that our nationality issues much less, that Palestine does not exist and Palestinians do not exist. And I’m right here to say that we do exist.
SHAY ROSENGARTEN: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: Throughout the road, counter demonstrators, members of a right-wing nationalist group, wave Israeli flags. Organizer Shay Rosengarten screams whereas pointing on the Palestinians.
ROSENGARTEN: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: “You all ought to kiss the Israeli flag.” Rosengarden says, for him, the Palestinian flag shouldn’t be a logo of nationwide id, however of hostility in direction of the Jewish state.
ROSENGARTEN: Each time they’re waving this flag, they’re calling for intifada. They’re calling for riots and revolts in opposition to the states of – the state of Israel. So that is an enemy flag.
STERN: The concept that the Palestinian flag itself constitutes incitement has turn out to be more and more accepted beneath Israel’s far-right Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. On his political social gathering’s YouTube web page, he posts this video praising police for arresting an Arab citizen accused of portray a Palestinian flag on a police station.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: “There isn’t a one who will incite in opposition to the state and be allowed to get away with it. These days are over,” he says. “Those that incite can be arrested.”
Maybe probably the most uncommon case concerned Alex Sinclair, a spiritual Jewish educator who wears a kippah, or Jewish skullcap. It is embroidered with each the Israeli and Palestinian flags. Earlier this yr, an Israeli reported him to the police. Officers detained him and took him to the station. Hours later, he was launched, however his kippah had been completely altered.
ALEX SINCLAIR: The policewoman who was in cost went again into the police station, lower out the Palestinian flag from the kippah after which gave it again to me as type of, you already know, a sort of mutilated kippah.
STERN: Rights teams say instances like Sinclair’s mirror political strain moderately than the regulation. Keren Saar, of the Affiliation for Civil Rights in Israel, says there isn’t a authorized ban on the flag, however police insist they’re simply preserving the general public order.
KEREN SAAR: We’re seeing that the police is sort of oblivion for freedom of speech and freedom of id and freedom of expression and freedom of protest.
STERN: Israeli police didn’t reply to an NPR request for remark and mentioned they might not talk about the Sinclair case as a result of it is nonetheless beneath investigation.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).
STERN: However for Aleen Nassra, the organizer of the Nakba Day rally, police restrictions are unlikely to make the image disappear.
NASSRA: Possibly they’re forbidding us to have the flag, however we’ll have a method to have the flag within the sky sooner or later.
STERN: We is not going to let Israel erase our land or our id, she says. For NPR Information, I am Itay Stern in Tel Aviv.
Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts could fluctuate. Transcript textual content could also be revised to appropriate errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org could also be edited after its unique broadcast or publication. The authoritative document of NPR’s programming is the audio document.
