As demonstrations, protests, and outright riots spread across Europe and beyond, the question of who was responsible for what quickly overtook any discussion about what the protesters were actually asking for. The left blamed capitalism and the populist right for their woes; the right blamed immigrants and the populist left for theirs. The left insists that these are peaceful protests, with a few far-left protesters getting carried away; the right insists that they’re out-of-control, violent riots led by “lefties” and Muslim immigrants intent on bringing down the Western world order. The vast majority of us in the middle, meanwhile, struggle to distinguish partisanship from objectivity and sensationalism from truth.
But what the protesters are asking for is actually important. The cost of living worldwide is out of control. Whether it’s schoolchildren calling for better education, the working class calling for more affordable housing, or older people protesting the way their pensions have been handled, there’s little doubt that many, most, perhaps even all of the demands are entirely valid, even if and when the methods of protest increasingly aren’t.
And yet, one thing that unifies this social unrest as it spreads across Europe and beyond is that it is, fundamentally, about local issues. It’s about governments, capitalism, populist movements, and the democratic system itself failing the people. It’s about the left and centre fearing the rise of the far-right, and the right and centre fearing the rise of the far-left.
It is, quite simply, a reflection of modern European life for ordinary Europeans.
So why, exactly, does the one flag that keeps showing up at these protests have absolutely nothing to do with life in Europe? Why is this flag being flown to protest countries and governments that reside on a different continent entirely, and why is it this one flag that unites all of these protests, despite having nothing, seemingly, to do with any of them?
In short, what on Earth is the Palestinian flag, for of course it’s the Palestinian flag, doing taking a starring role in protests in and about Europe?
A New Symbol
On the most basic level, the universalisation of the Palestinian flag proves, once again, that the pro-Palestinian movement has never really been about actual Palestinians as actual people. Oh, certainly, some of its followers may well be entirely genuine in their concerns for Palestinian suffering, but the movement itself is something else entirely. It has done precious little to actually help real Palestinian people, after all, and has frequently done grievous harm to them, especially when it infantilises them, robs them of agency, and equates them with their oppressive leadership.
Palestinians have long been used as pawns against Israel by her enemies, but between the fall of the USSR and the Abraham Accords, Israel’s relationships have improved, sometimes greatly, with the Gulf and Arab states that were once her bitterest foes. While this was happening, though, far more insidious forces have hijacked the Palestinian cause to attack not just Israel but the entire free world.
I realise this sounds like conspiratorial thinking of the highest order, but these malignant forces have been less than subtle about it. The Islamic Republic of Iran has turned “Death to America, Death to Israel” into something of a national motto, while Qatar has spent billions of dollars on Western universities. At the same time, the Islamic Republic’s close allies, China and Russia, have slowly but steadily turned up the heat in their Cold War with the United States and Europe.
The “pro-Palestine” movement reflects this exactly. Again, it operates in a way that has inflicted no insignificant damage on Israel and Jews worldwide without ever providing tangible help to actual Palestinians (and no, the one does not follow the other), but its target has never been just the Jewish state.
You don’t even have to be a particularly keen observer to note some particularly worrying aspects of pro-Palestinianism, especially at its many rallies worldwide. At least, not for those of us who support liberal democracy over theocracy, communism, tyranny, and radical Islamism.
In contrast to pro-Israel or anti-antisemitism rallies, where the flags of the nations in which they’re occurring are flown right beside the Israeli flag, such patriotism is often absent at “pro-Palestinian” rallies. Instead, “pro-Palestinian” protests fly the Palestinian flag alongside the flags of Hamas and the Islamic Republic, frequently carried by masked people in terrorist cosplay. The slogans, too, along with being anything but peaceful, are constantly and brazenly anti-liberal-democratic.
The “pro-Palestine” movement has shown itself, repeatedly, to be pro-Islamist, anti-liberal, and very, very far-left. And I can think of no greater proof of this than the preponderance of the Palestinian flag across these European protests.
Change for the Better or the Worse
At the heart of these protests, after all, is a great, overwhelming dissatisfaction with the current Western world order. They’re about a capitalism that has created an unacceptable disparity between the tiny wealthy class and everyone else. They’re about impossible costs of living. They’re about a democratic system that swaps one out-of-touch political elitist for another. They’re against exploitation by those in power and helplessness among those who aren’t.
These are, again, serious and valid concerns. They do not justify violence or property damage, especially as the victims of these are seldom the actual people in power but are overwhelmingly working-class stiffs like cops, shopkeepers, small-business owners, and the occasional synagogue. But they do justify impassioned calls for change.
The old cliché of throwing out the baby with the bathwater comes to mind here, though.
It’s one thing calling for greater social justice, reined-in capitalism, and a government that works for all people and not just the select few, but it’s quite another to call for the replacement of a deeply flawed but functional, and at times even ideologically immaculate, world order with the obvious evils of communism, totalitarianism, and radical Islam. Not only would it be disastrous for the free world, but it’s an utter slap in the face to those who have suffered and continue to suffer under these oppressive, utterly unfree societies.
Which is why it is the greatest, most tragic irony that the Palestinian flag has become a symbol of those who want to replace the current liberal-democratic order not with something better, but with something demonstrably worse. Something that is embodied not by the aspirations of ordinary Palestinians for the simple chance to live with the freedom that so many of us take for granted, but by those who rob them of those freedoms.
Something that represents an ideology encapsulated by the utterly corrupt Palestinian Authority, which has failed to hold a national election in two decades; an utterly monstrous Hamas that would gladly sacrifice tens of thousands of these very civilians in its ideological war against Israel; or the Islamic Republic that would do the same against the entire liberal-democratic order.
It’s one thing, in other words, for Palestinians to fly their flag in defiance of Israel. This is to be expected. It’s even reasonable. It’s quite another, though, for it to be flown by far-left agitators, misguided university students, or Islamist immigrants in support of the very ideologies that have kept ordinary Palestinians, Iranians, Russians, the Chinese, and countless others in the “Global South” oppressed for decades.
Ilan Preskovsky is a Johannesburg-based freelance writer whose work covers everything from international politics and Jewish culture and religion to film and television reviews. His writing has appeared online in publications including News24, Popverse, and BizNews, and in print in Business Day, Jewish Life Magazine, and The Star, among others.
