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
Trump Invites Israel’s Netanyahu to White House, Prime Minister’s Office Says
US President Donald Trump talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. Photo: Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS
US President Donald Trump has invited Israel‘s Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House in the “near future,” the prime minister’s office said on Monday, shortly after Trump said Israel should maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria.
A visit to the White House would mark the Israeli prime minister’s fifth since Trump returned to office in January. The two leaders have publicly projected a close relationship, though US and Israeli sources have said Trump has at times expressed frustration with Netanyahu.
The prime minister’s office said Netanyahu and Trump discussed disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza. Trump in September announced a plan to end the Gaza war and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place since October.
TRUMP PUSHES ISRAEL-SYRIA DIALOGUE
Trump earlier said in a statement that it was very important that Israel maintained a “strong and true dialogue” with neighboring Syria, and that “nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous state.”
“Syria and Israel will have a long and prosperous relationship together,” said Trump, whose administration is trying to broker a non-aggression pact between the two states.
Syria does not formally recognize Israel, which following the fall of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.
The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria and later annexes by Israel, was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Trump has backed Syria’s new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, while Israel voiced hostility over his past links to Islamist militancy and has lobbied Washington to keep Syria weak.
An Israeli raid in southern Syria on Friday killed 13 Syrians, Syrian state media reported. The Israeli military said it had targeted a Lebanese Islamist terror group there.
The call with Trump also came a day after Netanyahu asked Israel‘s president for a pardon in his long-running corruption trial. Trump has publicly voiced support for pardoning Netanyahu and sent a letter last month urging President Isaac Herzog to consider it.
The prime minister’s readout of the call made no mention of the pardon. Israeli opposition politicians have come out against the request and called on Netanyahu to instead resign.
Uncategorized
Iran’s Water Crisis Deepens as Experts Say Extreme Drought Is Worst in At Least 40 Years
People shop water storage tanks following a drought crisis in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran’s water crisis has continued to deteriorate, with the country experiencing a severe drought which has prompted calls to evacuate the capital of Tehran, whose metropolitan area is home to approximately 15 million people.
From Sept. 23 to Nov. 28, Iran averaged 3.9 millimeters of rain, a staggering drop of 88.3 percent compared to the longterm average of 33.5 millimeters, according to Iran’s meteorology authorities.
“Nature is now imposing hard limits,” Amir AghaKouchak, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine, told CNN. “For decades, policies have encouraged the expansion of irrigated agriculture in arid regions,” he explained, echoing others who have identified many years of economic, agricultural, and policy decisions which have drained the desert nation’s aquifers.
AghaKouchak described the current drought as the worst for at least 40 years.
Iran’s state-run ISNA news site reported that the country had not seen rain in November’s last week and that the four provinces experiencing the worst conditions were Bushehr, South Khorasan, Qom, and Yazd. ISNA also named Tehran Province as a region with low rain, citing a 97.4 percent drop. Factors named as impacting the drought included drying wetlands, decreases in humidity, fewer clouds, failure to update infrastructure, expansion of agriculture into dry regions, growth in the oil industry, building too many dams, and “intensified land subsidence.”
Iran has reached a state of “water bankruptcy,” according to Kaveh Madani, who served as deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment. He is currently director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health.
Mohsen Mesgaran, an associate professor of plant sciences at the University of California, Davis, told CNN that “an estimated 30 percent of treated drinking water is lost through old, leaky distribution systems, and there’s very little water recycling.”
Ali Bitollahi, head of the Earthquake Engineering and Risk Department at the Road, Housing, and Urban Development Research Center, labeled the drought “very serious” and called it the “driest autumn in the country.”
Reuters reported that 10 percent of the dams in the country had run dry.
Mohsen Ardakani, the director general of the Tehran Provincial Water and Sanitation Authority, said last month that the main reservoirs supplying the capital city were at 11 percent capacity, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency.
The Latyan Dam outside Tehran is reportedly around 9 percent full, while the Amir Kabir Dam is around 8 percent of its capacity.
Mashhad, Iran’s second largest metropolitan area with 3 million people, had reached 3 percent of its water capacity, according to Hossein Esmailian, head of the city’s water and wastewater utility company.
The Mehr News Agency reported that wheat production in the country dropped 30 percent due to the previous year’s drought.
The government has explored using cloud seeding to provoke rain but has seen limited results.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has stated that water rationing will begin this month if rain does not return. On Nov. 6, he said that “even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They [citizens] have to evacuate Tehran.”
About two weeks later, Pezeshkian said that the country “has no choice” but to relocate its capital, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain.
“The truth is, we have no choice left — relocating the capital is now a necessity,” he said during a televised national address, asserting that the deepening crisis has “rendered the city uninhabitable.”
However, Mesgaran noted that “most households simply can’t afford such a move,” asking, “Where would people even go?”
Amid the water crisis, the Iranian regime has spent significant resources on bolstering its military and nuclear programs, spending an estimated billions of dollars on support for its terrorist proxies abroad.
According to the US Treasury Department, for example, Iran has provided more than $100 million per month to Hezbollah so far this year alone, with $1 billion representing only a portion of Tehran’s overall support for the Lebanese terrorist group.
Uncategorized
Northwestern University Agrees to $75 Million Settlement With Trump Admin Over Antisemitism Complaints
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, April 9, 2025. Photo: Vincent Alban via Reuters Connect.
Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million and abolish a controversial agreement it reached with a pro-Hamas student group in exchange for the US federal government’s releasing $790 million in grants it impounded in April over accusations of antisemitism and reverse discrimination.
“Today’s settlement marks another victory in the Trump administration’s fight to ensure that American educational institutions protect Jewish students and put merit first,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Friday. “Institutions that accept federal funds are obligated to follow civil rights law — we are grateful to Northwestern for negotiating this historic deal.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Northwestern struggled to correct an impression that it had coddled pro-Hamas protesters and acceded to their demands for a boycott of Israel in exchange for an end to their May 2024 encampment, in which they illegally occupied the Deering Meadow section of campus.
Part of the deal, infamously known as the “Deering Meadow Agreement,” to end the encampment stipulated establishing a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contacting potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, creating a segregated dormitory hall to be occupied exclusively by students of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim descent, and forming a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
“As part of this agreement with the federal government, the university has terminated the Deering Meadow Agreement and will reverse all policies that have been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it,” the university said in a statement, noting that it also halted plans for the segregated dormitory. “The university remains committed to fostering inclusive spaces and will continue to support student belonging and engagement through existing campus facilities and organizations, while partnering with alumni to explore off-campus, privately owned locations that could further support community connection and programming.”
On Friday, the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN), whose activism contributed to the federal government’s sanctioning the university, said it “welcomes the fact that the Resolution Agreement nullifies the discriminatory Deering Meadow Agreement, a document that represented one of the lowest points in Northwestern’s history.”
It added, “That agreement granted preferential treatment based on national origin, empowered groups involved in harassment, bypassed required governance safeguards, and signaled an institutional surrender rather than leadership. Its elimination is an essential step toward reinstating civil rights compliance and restoring the university’s credibility.”
Northwestern previously touted its progress on addressing the campus antisemitism crisis in April, saying that it had addressed alleged failures highlighted by lawmakers and Jewish civil rights activists.
“The university administration took this criticism to heart and spent much of last summer revising our rules and policies to make our university safe for all of our students, regardless of their religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, or political viewpoint,” the statement said. “Among the updated policies is our Demonstration Policy, which includes new requirements and guidance on how, when, and where members of the community may protest or otherwise engage in expressive activity.”
The university added that it also adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
“This included a live training for all new students in September and a 17-minute training module for all enrolled students, produced in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund,” it continued. “Antisemitism trainings will continue as a permanent part of our broader training in civil rights and Title IX.”
Other initiatives rolled out by the university include an Advisory Council to the President on Jewish Life, dinners for Jewish students hosted by administrative officials, and educational events which raise awareness of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world. Additionally, Northwestern said that it imposed disciplinary sanctions against several students and one staff member whose conduct violated the new “Demonstration and/or Display Policies” which regulate peaceful assembly on the campus.
“Over the past two years, Northwestern has implemented numerous measures to strengthen our campus environment: new training requirements, expanded reporting systems and greater support for Jewish students. All of those measures predated this agreement,” the university said on Friday. “Incidents have significantly declined as a result. As part of the agreement, we will continue strengthening those measures, including a new campus climate survey for Jewish students.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.