Uncategorized
On Israel’s 75th Independence Day, its flag has taken on new meaning as a protest symbol
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Avigail Arnheim has been protesting Benjamin Netanyahu for years, starting with the demonstrations in Jerusalem that began in 2020, calling on him to resign as Israel’s prime minister.
When Netanyahu returned to office in December, Arnheim again took to the streets — this time to protest Netanyahu’s attempt to sap the Israeli Supreme Court of its power. And now, she comes armed with what she sees as a potent symbol: an Israeli flag emblazoned with the words of the country’s Declaration of Independence.
“I feel that the people of Israel woke up, and finally understands that life needs to come with values, with morals and with caring,” she said at a mass protest Tuesday night in Tel Aviv, as Israel began celebrating its 75th Independence Day. Arnheim believes those ideas are reflected in the declaration, which was signed on the day of Israel’s founding, traces the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and pledges democracy and human rights.
She added, “I think that the meaning of the flag has received a place in a society that wasn’t aware of it for a long time.”
Seeing the streets of Israel festooned with flags is one of the hallmarks of the country’s Independence Day, called Yom Haatzmaut in Hebrew. It’s common for flags to line streets and hang from balconies. A popular children’s song sung on the holiday begins, “The whole land is flags.”
But this year, Israel’s quintessential national symbol has taken on a different meaning for some, as the hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters have, for months, made the flag the icon of their cause. The flag has become so associated with the protests that Zichron Yaakov, a city north of Tel Aviv, briefly banned the flag and images of the Declaration of Independence from its Independence Day parade.
Voices on the right have chafed against the idea that the flag now indicates opposition to the government. But there was little, if any, skepticism about that idea on the streets of Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, where protesters enthusiastically adapted a range of Independence Day traditions to express their opinions.
Thousands of Israeli protesters wave flags during a rally against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul bills in Jerusalem, March 27, 2023. (Gili Yaari/Flash90)
Some protesters viewed their embrace of the flag as a corrective that now allows the flag to represent what they see as Israel’s founding aspirations, following years during which it was perceived as a symbol of Israel’s right wing. Before this year’s protests, another prominent political association for the flag was with religious nationalists who hold an annual “flag march” in Jerusalem’s Old City that has stoked Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
“It’s a symbol that had been hijacked for way too long by the right,” said Roy Rob, a graphic designer at the Tel Aviv rally who splits his time between Israel and Brooklyn. “It’s the same in the States: The American flag has really been hijacked and pigeonholed.”
Regarding the Israeli flag, he added, “Now it’s being democratized again. It makes sense that the people who really care about the origin of Israel, what Israel is all about, use the original symbols of it.”
Some right-wingers aren’t ready to yield Israel’s national symbols. Gideon Dokov, an editor at the right-leaning newspaper Makor Rishon, called the idea that the flag represents opposition to the judicial overhaul “absurd.”
“By mistake or intentionally, it seems that in recent months, there are those who are trying to take ownership of the national symbols — the flag and the Declaration of Independence — on behalf of the protests, just as they’re trying to take ownership of [the concept of] democracy,” Dokov wrote earlier this month. “Both are incorrect.”
In any case, flags were ubiquitous at Tuesday night’s protest. When asked where they got theirs, several protesters made a perplexed face that seemed to ask, “Where have you been all this time?”
The flags, they said, aren’t hard to get. Many were distributed for free at earlier protests, along with black T-shirts that read, “De-mo-cra-cy” in Hebrew block letters, copying the central chant of the demonstrations. Other shirts, like Rob’s, which read, “There’s no democracy with occupation,” were also distributed by activist groups at earlier protests. Many flags included the phrase “Free in our land,” which comes from Israel’s national anthem.
Others already had flags at home, and some bought them recently. At the protest, a man who was selling the flags and other assorted tchotchkes out of a stuffed shopping cart said the flag itself, without a pole, costs around $5.50. He said he bought his merchandise from stores and was reselling it, but would not provide further details.
A flag vendor stands with his wares during a Yom Haatzmaut celebration and anti-government protest in Tel Aviv, April 25, 2023. (Ben Sales)
The flags with the Declaration of Independence text, Arnheim said, went for about $13.75 and were sold by their creator via group chats used to organize the protests. Nati Hochberg, who traveled from a town north of Tel Aviv to demonstrate, said he bought his flag (with pole) for some $11 at a hardware store, after someone stole a previous flag of his from his motorcycle.
“We’ve taken back what belongs to us,” Hochberg said of the flag. His friend Tal Vardi, who traveled with him and has had his flag for years, added, “This population for many years ceded these symbols and now it’s taking them back. … I don’t know if it happened coincidentally, but it’s a feeling that it also belongs to us.”
That the flag has turned into a protest symbol, said one woman from northern Israel who declined to give her name, elicits a mixture of “pride and sadness” regarding the political conflict raging in the country.
“It’s clearly preferable for this not to be,” she said while holding a flag identical to Arnheim’s. “But if it is like this, at least the flag should have meaning.”
The protesters didn’t shy away from adapting other Independence Day pastimes, either. A white, foamy spray traditionally blasted by children on the holiday was being rebranded at the protest as “democracy snow” (one big can for about $2.75).
At a less crowded area of the protest, someone used the spray to spell out “democracy” in large letters on the ground. On a nearby bicycle path, the word “Leave,” used as a chant against Netanyahu, was also written in the spray. A cyclist stopped short before running it over.
A Tel Aviv protest at the start of Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, featured a sea of flags, April 25, 2023. (Ben Sales)
Soft plastic hammers, another holiday mainstay, were also visible throughout the crowd. And a DJ blasted classic Israeli dance music in the middle of the demonstration, including the American Jewish summer camp favorite “Zodiac,” sung by Yaron Hadad.
In general, signs of the protests freckle Tel Aviv, which has been the nerve center of the demonstrations and the bastion of Israel’s left-wing minority. Municipal bus stops bear signs playing on the words of the national anthem and implying that the protests will keep Israel “Free from racism,” “Free from repression of women” and more. Graffiti supporting the protests — such as “Bibi is a traitor” — also isn’t hard to find, though there is also a smattering of pro-overhaul graffiti such as one message calling Israel’s Supreme Court a dictatorship.
Some paraphernalia at the demonstration trumpeted specific causes, like an LGBTQ pride flag, a flag that spelled out “democracy” in the colors of the Israeli and Palestinian flags, or a T-shirt, given out by an self-styled “moderate majority” activist group, that read “I [heart] Bagatz,” the Hebrew acronym for the Supreme Court.
Some participants got more creative. At a table in a sparse area, a few people offered free alcohol to passersby while a young man using a megaphone sang “Democracy and arak” to the tune of the famous riff from the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
The idea, his colleague Ron said, was to give people free drinks to celebrate the country and the protests — which they hope will preserve the possibility for young people to get an education and find dignified work.
“In general, this is our last shot to save democracy, so everyone who wants to save democracy gets a shot as a gift from us,” said Ron, 23, who declined to give his last name. ”We love everyone, and we love democracy.”
—
The post On Israel’s 75th Independence Day, its flag has taken on new meaning as a protest symbol appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Ran Gvili, last remaining Israeli hostage in Gaza, featured on 2 Times Square digital billboards
(JTA) — Commuters in Times Square were confronted this week with a new digital billboard demanding the release of the final remaining hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili.
“Hamas must release him now,” the billboard reads next to a photo of Gvili. “The last Israeli hostage held in Gaza.”
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer who was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, was one of roughly 250 hostages taken into Gaza.
The billboard, which is part of an effort led by the Israeli Consulate in New York and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, comes nearly two months after all 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Since then, the remaining deceased hostages in Gaza have been returned intermittently, including the remains of Thai agricultural worker Sudthisak Rinthalak last week, in a slow process that has extended tensions between Israel and Hamas.
Last month, the American Jewish Committee launched its own billboard campaign in Times Square that featured a montage of the remaining hostages in Gaza. Today, the display only features Gvili.
“The nightmare isn’t over,” the AJC’s billboard reads, according to a video the group posted on Youtube Tuesday, followed by a photo of Gvili’s mother holding a hostage poster of him with the caption, “A family incomplete.”
Later in the slideshow, the screen displays a photo of Gvili with the caption, “Over two years later, Hamas still holds Ran hostage in Gaza,” before ending with the message, “Bring Ran home now.”
As the number of hostages has dwindled and the weekly hostage rallies have come to a close, Gvili’s parents have become the only hostage family members in the public eye.
“We’re at the last stretch and we have to be strong, for Rani, for us, and for Israel. Without Rani, our country can’t heal,” Gvili’s mother, Talik, told Reuters on Monday.
Once Gvili is returned, the ceasefire plan is supposed to move into its second phase as laid out in a plan devised by President Donald Trump this fall.
Trump has said phase two is imminent. But while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters Sunday he expects the plan to move into its second phase “very shortly,” Hamas political bureau member Husam Badran said on Tuesday that Israel had not yet honored its part of the deal, pointing to the continued closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt. (Israel has said the crossing will open soon to allow Palestinians to exit Gaza.)
Both Israel and Hamas would lose authority in Gaza during the next phase of Trump’s plan, which would establish a “Board of Peace” helmed by Trump to make decisions about Gaza’s future. It is expected that the Palestinian Authority will play a role in the board, which Israeli officials have said they oppose, and Hamas will face renewed pressure to disarm, which it does not want to do.
Some have speculated that Hamas knows the location of Gvili’s remains but has not released them to avoid bringing the hostage-release phase of the ceasefire to an end. That leaves him and his story of Oct. 7 heroism in the public eye for longer.
“We will not forget for a single moment Ran Gvili, an Israeli hero. Even with an injured shoulder, Ran went out to defend and repel the Hamas monsters who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023,” said Ofir Akunis, the consul general of Israel in New York, in a statement about the Times Square billboard. “Israel demands that Hamas fully complete Phase A before we proceed to the beginning of Phase B of President Trump’s plan.”
The post Ran Gvili, last remaining Israeli hostage in Gaza, featured on 2 Times Square digital billboards appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Qatar’s Sudden Moral Outrage on Gaza Reconstruction Rings Hollow
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani speaks on the first day of the 23rd edition of the annual Doha Forum, in Doha, Qatar, December 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Qatar delivered one of the most revealing geopolitical moments of the year when its prime minister, Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani, announced that Doha will not pay to rebuild Gaza.
The irony is extraordinary. Qatar, the same state that hosted Hamas’ top leadership for more than a decade, financed Gaza’s bureaucracy, and positioned itself as Hamas’ indispensable diplomatic back channel, now insists it bears no responsibility for the consequences of the very organization it nurtured.
The sudden rediscovery of fiscal restraint would be amusing if the implications weren’t so revealing.
What Doha is attempting is not moral clarity. It is narrative control. By refusing to participate in reconstruction, Qatar avoids the unavoidable admission that its financial, political, and media patronage strengthened the organization that triggered the current war.
If Gaza was “destroyed,” as Qatari officials tirelessly proclaim, then a basic question follows: destroyed in response to what? Hamas executed the October 7 massacre, built an underground fortress of tunnels, stockpiled rockets in civilian zones, and systematically transformed Gaza into a militarized enclave. These were not accidental byproducts of governance. They were deliberate investments — and Qatar was Hamas’ most generous financial sponsor.
The record is not a matter of political interpretation. US Treasury designations, UN reports, and major independent investigations have repeatedly documented that Qatar-based donors, charities, and intermediaries supported Hamas, alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Mali. Qatari individuals sanctioned by the United States have also raised funds for Jabhat al-Nusra (HTS).
These findings are not Israeli claims; they originate from American counterterrorism authorities and multilateral bodies.
Yet Qatar continues to brand itself as a humanitarian benefactor to Gaza. In practice, its “relief payments” repeatedly functioned as political leverage: money that sustained Hamas’ rule and relieved the organization of basic governing responsibilities, all while allowing Doha to posture as a benevolent mediator.
Meanwhile, other regional powers have made their terms clear regarding Gaza reconstruction. The UAE and Saudi Arabia insist that any reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to a political framework that prevents Hamas from reconstituting itself. Qatar, by contrast, has spent years cultivating an outcome in which Hamas survives as a viable actor, preserving Doha’s influence and its role as a necessary mediator.
If Hamas’ military infrastructure is dismantled, Qatar is left with a failed investment and is now eager to disclaim responsibility for the outcome.
This dynamic is not new. For more than a decade, Qatar and Iran have served as parallel financial engines for Islamist militant groups across the region, using state funds, quasi-state charities, and well-connected private donors to support this activity. Western governments long tolerated the arrangement because Qatar hosts a major US air base, commands immense energy wealth, and uses its media empire to shape regional debate. But the mask is slipping. Doha’s attempt to distance itself from the consequences of its own policy choices exposes a contradiction it can no longer conceal.
This leads to the essential question: who still takes Qatar’s moral lectures seriously?
A state that sheltered Hamas’ leadership now claims neutrality. A state whose sanctioned donors aided extremist networks now positions itself as a humanitarian authority. A state that spent years empowering the group responsible for one of the worst atrocities in modern history now refuses to help rebuild the territory devastated by that group’s actions.
The world should stop pretending not to see the pattern. Qatar’s diplomatic theater cannot hide the facts. The Emirate has influence, resources, and global reach. What it lacks, despite its insistence, is credibility.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
Uncategorized
How the Palestinian Authority Encourages Children to Die for Allah
A group of Palestinian children being taught that Israel will be destroyed. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Instead of encouraging children to reach heights in education and contribute something positive in their lives, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education continues to indoctrinate children to see dying for Allah – Shahada (Martyrdom) – as the great ideal.
This child abuse was once again highlighted last week during celebrations of the UN’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The Tulkarem Directorate of Education proudly posted photos on Facebook — taken at the school events — of children holding signs glorifying Martyrdom.
One sign portrayed Martyrs as smelling sweeter than a jasmine flower:
“How could a jasmine not envy a homeland that smells of Martyrs?” [Tulkarem Directorate of Education, Facebook page, Dec. 2, 2025]
Another sign proclaimed: “We will live like soaring eagles, and we will die like proud lions; we are all for the homeland and we are all for Palestine.”
These slogans encapsulate the PA’s indoctrination that Martyrdom, even for children, is not tragic or regrettable, but something beautiful, fragrant, and desirable. The PA is encouraging violence, and glorifying the murder of Jews.
Other posters held by students featured the PA map of “Palestine,” which erases Israel and displays the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestinian land:
One sign was accompanied by the slogan: “The compass will never deviate from the path and will continue to point towards Palestine.”
Other students carried large symbolic keys, representing the so-called “right of return,” which the PA teaches is an inevitable immigration to all of Israel’s cities and towns of nearly six million Arab descendants of so-called “refugees.”
The message to the children is that Israel has no right to exist and that the national mission, or “the path,” remains the elimination of Israel.
The events were attended by high-level PA officials, including Tulkarem Education Directorate Director-General Mazen Jarrar, Tulkarem District representative Rasha Sabah, and Fatah Movement Tulkarem Branch Secretary Iyad Jarrad.
These official PA education events, which glorify violence, romanticize Martyrdom, erase Israel from the map, and instill lifelong hatred towards Israel, are all part of the ongoing PA campaign to ensure that the next generation denies Israel’s right to exist and is willing to fight and seek death to achieve its goals.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.