A very interesting difference between Israel and the United States.
I have many friends who say that they want to come to Israel one day. I have no doubt as to their sincerity. I also realize that family, work, expense and other factors—like a shooting war—can make coming to Israel a challenge. Israel is a beautiful and lively country; it can also be very expensive and at times enervating.
For those planning to come, I would offer a few words beyond “Shalom.” Todah means thanks, while felafel needs no explanation. One more word to have in your Hebrew quiver is “hafganah”. A hafganah is a protest. Since I arrived here many years ago, I have seen protests on virtually every subject. There are hafganot (plural) on the left and on the right. There are protests from the ultraorthodox and secular. My wife and I were once stuck in a horrible traffic jam due to a protest at the entrance to the city. While going nowhere, I asked a cop what the story was. “The disabled are protesting for higher governmental stipends. We can’t clear them and their wheelchairs out without looking really bad, so be patient. You’ll be here for a while.”
One thing that struck me when I was just getting used to not going where I wanted to go due to some protest was that every hafganah featured many Israeli flags. Now, if one looks at the pro-Hamas activities or any anti-Trump protest in the U.S., the one thing that will be missing is the American flag. Those in the U.S. are effectively saying thus: “We are opposed to the government and we are protesting or demanding policies opposite those of the president and his administration.” Obviously the keffiyeh crowd may not be so well-spoken, but for every 200 Palestinian flags at Columbia or Harvard, there are exactly zero stars and stripes. I looked at pictures from a large AOC/Bernie Sanders rally, and there was all of one American flag visible—on the stage.
So why do Israeli protesters (except for the ultraorthodox who have a fundamental problem with the state as formulated) wave dozens or hundreds of Israeli flags if they are opposed to the government represented by said flags? The answer would appear to be that their argument would differ from the approach of those on the left in the U.S. Israeli protesters believe that they are the real practitioners of what the state of Israel is supposed to be; the ones in power are frauds or misguided. They do not reject the state but want a state that reflects their values or positions. In the U.S., the lack of American flags at pro-Hamas events or Antifa, BLM, or hard-left protests says something else: the U.S. is a bad country and we want to overthrow it and install our vision for what should be the country between Canada and Mexico. Their hatred of the U.S., the Constitution, the institutions, and those who are proud Americans is so great that they cannot bring themselves to have American flags present at their events. In Washington, at Yale, and elsewhere, pro-terror protesters have actually taken down American flags and replaced them with Palestinian colors. What are they trying to say? That the U.S. should be Palestine, “between the ocean and the ocean”? Probably not. Rather, they reject the U.S. and its leadership and demand that U.S. policy be in favor of the destruction of Israel.
I believe that in decades past, the Democrats and the left were more like the protesters in Israel: they would have looked at Ronald Reagan and said that his vision for America was wrong. They would see themselves as patriots (many had served before the draft was canceled) who offered a different vision on foreign affairs, taxation, fighting poverty, etc. They would not have pulled themselves out of the general description of “proud Americans,” and they would have had no problem with the American flag and the country’s history it represented. Today’s lefties who are swallowing the Democratic Party whole see nothing good in the U.S. They claim that it was built on slavery and that it supports Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. They see the government as the opposite of DOGE, namely that it should be a big ATM giving everyone money for reasons that range from reparations to a guaranteed income. If you were to go to a Hamas lovefest and ask those hiding their faces what they felt towards the country that has given them both a high standard of material comfort as well as freedom to say what they want on social media, they would not hold back. They would say that the U.S. is a racist country (that twice elected a black president), that it is guilty of patriarchy (after a woman vice president) and that it is a terrible country, so evil that 12 million people came galloping in illegally under Joe Biden. They have a warped view of the U.S. and as such cannot let the flag of such a terrible country be found anywhere near the anti-Jewish activities.
What starts as anti-Israel quickly moves to anti-Jewish. Jews being harassed, threatened and boycotted are not asked for their detailed views on Israel and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. No, you’re a Jew and that is reason enough to hate you. And from Jew hatred, it always slides to anti-Western bile. Those in the U.S. denounce America; they and their cohort in Europe drone on about how terrible their countries are and that Sharia or communism will replace common law as soon as they have the numbers and power to make it so. If someone brought an American flag to a Hamas protest, it would be ripped away and trampled as quickly and as thoroughly as if it had been an Israeli flag.
In Israel, those who protest against the state still believe enough in the concept and promise of “Israel” that they are not embarrassed by bringing the national flag to their protests. In the U.S., the hatred of all things Western has created a situation where the flag itself is accused of being a symbol of all of the terrible -isms that the brainless students and indebted former students learned in Oppression Studies 101. There is a desperate need to teach civics and pro-U.S. history at all levels of education. The U.S. is not perfect. But as LBJ said, “There was not one occasion when I went down from Air Force One when someone in that reception line would not have switched with me in a heartbeat to be an American.” It’s an amazing country and its flag should be honored accordingly.
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