A History of The Palestinian Flag
In which a flag of imperialism becomes a western mascot for freedom fighting
A lot has happened since I last wrote anything here. First, before I get to the topic du jour, let me tell you what I saw this weekend. I have watched a pogrom via video.
Opening Thoughts
I have watched young people like my own daughter run for their lives at a music festival. I have seen a young woman’s deformed and mutilated corpse paraded through the streets. I have seen a young woman badly beaten and raped, the bleeding from violent sodomising visible through her pants, her arms tied behind her back, shoved into an SUV in Gaza. These young women could have been my daughter. I have seen IDF officers dragged from their tanks, beaten to death. I have seen decapitated IDF officers with a Hamas terrorist standing above them, foot on the dead officer’s chest, as if proud of hunting and killing his prey. These young men could have been my son. I have seen a Thai man being decapitated with a garden hoe. This man could have been my neighbour or friend. I have seen reporters and IDF officers describe finding dead babies, entire families slaughtered, shot and decapitated babies amongst the dead. I have seen the photo of the bloodied crib. I have seen families in captivity fearing for their lives. I have seen a mother lay on top of her child. I have in my life experienced the loss of a child, and this weekend I felt the fear of a mother’s heart as I watched these mothers in action, humbled and devastated.
I have seen things this weekend. These things I saw left me incapacitated and in a fog, inert and exhausted and bewildered. I think I remained in my pyjamas for three days straight, simply soaking in the tub and changing my pyjamas between times of holding vigil watching the atrocities unfold flipping between Telegram and Twitter, not wanting to miss anything, least anyone denies the horror done. I am trained to nurse, I have seen bleeding wounds, tunnelling wounds, gaping and to the bone. I have seen fresh post op amputation stumps, I have seen a man exsanguinate before my eyes in a hospital bed and we could do nothing to stop the dramatic dying we all watched. This pogrom I saw this weekend makes my nursing chops look like child’s play. These things I saw carried out by Hamas reminded me of the many many Holocaust documentaries I have seen. I watched modern day Einzatzgruppen go door to door slaughtering innocent civilians. I have things to say about what I saw. In time you will read these things I have to say.
If people can be so easily convinced to kill others and celebrate killing committed by others, they can be convinced to kill my children, to kill my sisters, my brother, myself. This frightens me. It should frighten you. I am frightened for my children, for your children, for my neighbour’s children. I don’t give a fcuk about Arab nationalism and no religion should be hijacked to purvey so much human suffering and hate and barbarism. If a religious people cannot learn self control and human decency then human society will have to impose controls on them. Period.
“I didn’t want to argue with you about Hamas today,” is the response I received from an Arab Muslim friend yesterday morning when I shared the story about the 40 babies and described how the massacres that began over the weekend had really affected me. Basically the Jewish people are lying or they had it coming is the message. I wonder how many people are finding out that some of their friends are not who they thought? I wonder how many people are learning that their values and expectations for themselves and humanity differ vastly from many who grew up steeped in hatred and anger and perpetual victimhood. I wonder how many people didn’t realise that so many in the Muslim world hate their designated scapegoat enemy more than they love themselves, their kids, their people, their society, their society’s future?
We certainly have a great deal to think and talk about, don’t we? We can do, we can talk about this stuff — remember we are Canadian. Today though, let’s talk about the “Palestinian flag” and how it symbolises colonisation and a desire to destroy Jews and western society.
How Does Decolonisation Differ From Ethnic Cleansing?
For more than five decades, Israel has illegally occupied Palestinian in the longest military occupation in modern history, and implemented a system of apartheid. Gaza has been under blockade for 16 years, its residents forced to live in an open-air prison, writes Randa Abdel-Fattah in The New Arab.
Randa appears to have her facts misplaced. Below I’ll clear up the confusion in Randa’s statements.
First of all, let’s address “illegally occupied”. Israel went to war in 1967 and won. Each time the Arabs attacked Israel in the two decades after the birth of Israel by a UN Resolution, Israel gained more territory. During that time Arab nations also expelled every Jew from their countries — a total of 900K Jews lost their homes and property and livelihoods and can never return to their Arab homelands again. Well known Canadian professor and writer and social media personality Gad Saad was among the Jews expelled from Lebanon in 1975. Gad’s parents were captured by Fatah when they attempted to visit Lebanon in 1980. The Saad family has never been able to return to their homeland of Lebanon again because Jews are no longer welcome.
Secondly, let’s address “illegally occupied” with respect to Gaza. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2006 when Gazans voted for Hamas to be their government. Hamas has a mandate to kill all Jews and Infidels, that includes you and I by the way. Naturally Israel chooses self preservation and had to completely block off the Hamas territory. You’ve seen what happens when that Southern border is relaxed and not adequately secured — Gazans cannot be trusted in Israel.
Thirdly, let’s address “open air prison”. I urge you to check out for yourself what Gaza really looked like, as opposed to sitting in your complacency and seeing Gaza thru the eyes of the Palestinian Victimhood Cult (PVC), affectionately known as Pallywood, and listening to their western enablers. Villas and resorts and luxury showrooms with shiny fancy cars. Take a look at the open air prison that progressives and the PVC lament over repeatedly. Here’s a video from 3 months ago, the caption reads A project to construct a metal communications tower for the UN Relief Agency in Gaza, contractor Bright Quality Company and implemented by Muhammad Asho. There appears to be a whole world out there in Gaza functioning at some capacity above “open air prison” status. When did we decide that Gazans had no agency to choose wise and competent leadership and to build themselves a better society? Why have the Germans, Japanese, Indians, and Israelis been able to build their nations from the ruins of WW2, and the Palestinians have not done? What makes Palestinians unable to move forward?
Hatred does. Jealousy does. Both of these, self limiting behaviours that come from living inside the victimhood lock box. Victimhood becomes a sarcophagus, blocking you from the light that can help you grow. Seeds break themselves open to become fruit one day. Only the dud seeds remain unbroken, producing nothing.
So, what about the flag, though? What’s the origin story of the Palestinian flag, the supposed symbol of decolonisation and freedom fighting and resistance movements everywhere?
Decolonisation & The Flag of the Arab Revolt
The story of the “Palestinian flag” begins with the Arab revolt of 1916, when the British struck a deal with Hussein bin Ali, the Emir of the Mecca + Medina (precursor to Saudi Arabia). What’s the Arab Revolt? Think Lawrence of Arabia. Desperate to improve its position in the region, and desperate to gain a foothold after losing at Gallipoli, Britain sought to establish a relationship with Arab leadership and encouraged a revolt. The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence informally pledged Syria and Mesopotamia to the Arabs.1
Arabs felt disenfranchised under Ottoman rule in the face of increasing Turkish influence across the empire, with power centralised in Constantinople. The Young Turks abandoned pan-Islamism and the traditional theocratic structures of governance in favour of a Rousseauian structure of governance, a secular state with a constitution and a national identity. Increasingly the Ottomans punished Arab nationalism, banning Arab nationalist groups and punishing civilians suspected of engaging in Arab nationalist activities. Around this time the Armenian genocide happened, killing one million.
The Young Turks embraced progressive policies that would lift the ailing Ottoman empire into modernity. They signed the death warrant of the Ottoman Empire by breaking out of neutrality and supporting Germany and the central powers during WW1. The British, fighting against Germany and the Ottomans, supported an Arab revolt against the Ottomans. Capt Mark Sykes designed a flag for the revolt in an attempt stir up a sense of Arab nationalism. White are our deeds, black are our battles, Green are our fields, red are our swords, thirteenth century poet Safi a-Din al-Hili wrote. The colours represent the Islamic Caliphates and their dynasties, who waged war and conquered the vast territories between Iran, India, the Arabian peninsula and North Africa.
Red marks the Hashemite people. They ruled the Hejaz continuously for centuries and the city of Mecca between 1201 and 1925. Their symbol was a red flag, which became the symbol of the Islamic rulers of Andalusia in the years 756-1355;
Black marks the Abbasid caliphate. They ruled from Baghdad and used the black flag as a symbol of mourning for the assassination of the Prophet Mohammad’s relatives and a remembrance for the Battle of Karbala;
White marks the Umayyad caliphate, who’s white flags were used as a reminder of the Prophet’s first battle at Badr. Mu’awia Ibn Abi Sufian the first, founder of the Umayyad state, proclaimed himself Caliph of Jerusalem and was crowned as the caliphate of the Islamic empire. As a ruler, Sufian moved the center of Islam from Mecca to Damascus;
Green marks the Fatimid caliphate, a Shi’ite caliphate founded in Morocco named for the the daughter of Mohammed, considered holy to the Shi’ite Muslims. They ruled over all of North Africa, the Hejaz and Yemen, the Land of Israel, Syria and Sicily, in the years 909-1171. They chose the color green, to symbolize their allegiance to Ali, Mohammed’s cousin, who had wrapped himself in a green quilt to take the place of Mohammad, in order to thwart an assassination attempt. (Nimkovsky, 2018)
The Palestinian flag has its origin in the Arab Revolt, encouraged by the British to consolidate opposition against the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinian flag originated as symbol designed by a British military officer and imperial diplomatic liaison. The Palestinian flag has its roots in a symbol created to invoke and disrupt an existing government and cause destruction and cause that government and society and state to fall. The Palestinian flag has its roots in oppositionality, in destructive revolution and in imperial dynastic Islamism. According to the Government of Palestine website, On October 18, 1948, the all-Palestine Government adopted the flag of the Arab Revolt and the Arab League subsequently recognized it as the flag of Palestine. A modified version (changing the order of the stripes) has been used in Palestine at least since the late 1930s and was officially adopted as the flag of the Palestinian people by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. On November 15, 1988 the PLO adopted the flag as the flag of the State of Palestine, and then it became widely used. Currently, it is officially the flag of the State of Palestine.
So, let’s recap. The Palestinian flag is not the flag of a nation of people with a common identity and goal like the Maple Leaf or the Star Spangled Banner or the Union Jack. Rather, it’s a symbol of imperialism and conquest, both British and Islamic. Also, the Palestinian flag represents the consolidation of opposition to the state of Israel, it represents the desire to genocide Jewish people. The Palestinian cause right now solely hinges on the destruction of Israel. The Palestinian cause does not involve promoting life or transformation of suffering into progress. Palestinian mothers feel pride when their sons die committing terror acts — they call this martyrdom and families receive money as a reward from the Palestinian Authority for this purpose. Whilst Israel has Aliyah Palestinians have Pay to Slay.
Why would Jews or any modern + democratic country want to allow the expression of such a symbol in their societies? Why can the “free speech” muppets not reconcile that a symbol of genocide is by definition not free expression? If a form of expression represents the death of Jews, then it cannot be a free expression because Jews pay for this with their lives and with the lives of their children and grandparents and mothers and fathers and brothers. Why should anyone die so you can feel comfortable about your notion of “free expression” …? Not everyone thinks like you. Not everyone has the capacity for self control like you. How does a call to kill a swath of society and destroy a country equate to free expression? How does celebrating a pogrom that killed 1200 Jews equate to free expression?
I wonder if the CUPE officials who wrote the statement below could describe exactly what “apartheid structure” Hamas dismantled by massacring over a thousand Israeli people? What apartheid structure did babies and young hippies attending a rave uphold? How did their murder help the infrastructure of apartheid come down? How did Hamas dismantle the apartheid structure by kidnapping children and brutally raping and sodomising women? What apartheid structure? Arabs and Druze and Christians all live in Israel too, and they are represented in the military and politics and Israeli society. Hamas is the cause for the border — you have seen what happens when it fails.
Reader, do you find it weird that the cult of safety and hate in Canada seems unmoved and apathetic about a massive breach of safety and an explosion of hate that represents a sizeable threat to western society? What do you make of a wrong pronoun being unsafe and parental rights being hateful and mass murder and terror being dismantling oppressive infrastructure?
I don’t want to know who let the dogs out, I want to know, who let the Nazis in?
As Ben Shapiro said, the west has a case of narcissism — NOT EVERYONE THINKS LIKE YOU AND I DO! Decolonisation now has come to mean ethnic cleansing. Settler has come to mean subhuman. Resistance has now come to mean genocide and rape and beheading. Freedom fighting has now come to mean massacres and burning human beings alive and beheading them with garden hoes whilst they’re dying. The Palestinian people of Gaza voted for Hamas. In 2021 a survey of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank indicated that 53% believed Hamas “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14% prefer Abbas’ secular Fatah party. Hamas is the official government of Gaza. Hamas controls Gaza since 2005, when Israel pulled out. Hamas has a stated mission to kill all Jews and anyone who does not agree to live life on their terms under their rules. Note this includes westerners, whom Hamas consider infidels and kafir, i.e. deserving of death. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out, a statement in Article 6 of the Hamas Charter reads.
Hamas wants to exterminate the Jewish segment of humanity. Hamas wants to eliminate you and me, also, because we do not obey their stupid fatwas. Hamas cheers the attack on Salman Rushdie because of a book he wrote in 1988 that made Islamists mad. Hamas wants to kill and rape and behead and celebrate that barbarism. The people of Gaza chose that to lead them, the people of the West Bank seem to agree with that choice. I refuse to take any responsibility for the Palestinian cause as a westerner. I refuse to jolly along the lie that Europe and the west are the baddies and the Arabic world is our innocent and meek geopolitical suriyya-b1tch. I refuse to listen to calls for abolishing the British monarchy whilst we give the monarch of Saudi Arabia a pass for being a cold blooded killer of his own on foreign soil. Seriously, I am sick of listening to wealthy and entitled Muslims give money to a murderous regime state under the guise of going on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Holy City whilst whinging that the west is mean to them and hates them. Hajj this, Islamist Muslims — love is louder than hate.
Who is the colonizer of Muslims, then? The House of Saud, that’s who.
Ultimately Hussein, a direct descendant of The Prophet, ended up losing the Hejaz (which is Mecca and Medina, the two holy cities) to Ibn Saud, the founder of the bastardised and extremist form of (Sunni) Islam that now dominates the Arab world and much of the Muslim world globally. The current keepers of the holiest sites of Islam are not descendants of The Prophet, they are colonial usurpers. The King of Jordan is the true descendant of The Prophet, and the keeper of the third holiest site of Islam. The only interest for Islamists in Al Aqsa lies in the fact that it occupies the spot of the holiest site of Judaism, The Temple Mount. The only interest for Islamists in Jerusalem lies in the fact that Jews have a foundational attachment to the city. To me, Muslims seem like the jealous sibling of Jews, always wanting what the Jews have, hating what they themselves have, wanting what the other has, and hating the other, especially Jews and British people.
When Arabists and Islamists decide they love their children more than they hate us, then we can have peace and they can have progress and stability.
The British conducted their affairs in a duplicitous manner, with a view to its own self interests. The British hedged support for the present against plans for a post war world through the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement that The Triple Entente had drawn up to manage the lands of the fallen Ottoman empire. Britain, France and Tsarist Russia decided that Syria and Iraq would go to France and Britain respectively and that Palestine would remain under international control. The Arabs only discovered the deal existed when Russian Revolution of 1917 made its existence public. In his colonial myopia and egocentric optimism, Sykes believed pan-Arabism and Zionism could co-exist. Also, the British did not feel bound by the correspondence between McMahon and Hussein. Sykes did not see any conflict between a promise to the Zionists and a promise to the Arabists. Perhaps he saw Arabism as an alternative to the Ottoman-German influence, however it seems he ended up sewing the seeds of pan-Islamism and consolidated anti-semitism.