The Palestinian Flag Is As Inauthentic As the Palestinian People

On Saturday morning, a man went to the Beth Yaacov synagogue in the seaside French resort of La Grande-Motte, where he set two vehicles on fire. The fire spread to the doors of the synagogue and injured a police officer. A French intelligence official stated: “The suspect is Arab with a Palestinian flag tied around his waist and a handgun on his belt.” Of course he was. As NBC News noted in mid-July, “the Palestinian flag has become a symbol of solidarity for the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Israel-Hamas war.” Yet the Palestinian flag, this ubiquitous symbol of “resistance,” is as inauthentic as the Palestinian people themselves.

The Palestine flag itself is an indication of the fact that the Palestinians are a newly-minted ethnicity — invented, in fact, by the KGB and Yasir Arafat in the 1960s to be a weapon against Israel. Before it was the flag of Palestine, the flag was the banner of the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz, which was established in 1916 and absorbed into Saudi Arabia in 1925. In 1924, it also became the flag of the Sharifian Caliphate, which occupied much the same territory as the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz in what is now Western Saudi Arabia and lasted until 1931.

The Hejaz is in Arabia — not “Palestine.” The designer of the flag was not a Palestinian, as there were no Palestinians as such in those days, but an English Colonel named Mark Sykes.

What is known today as the flag of Palestine was never actually the flag of Palestine at all. The name “Palestine” historically refers to a region that was so named by the Romans after they expelled the Jews in 134AD. The Romans took this name from that of the Philistines, the Israelites’ Biblical enemies, who had long since died out. But Palestine for the Romans (and everyone else) was just the name of a region, not of a people, and it had no flag.

Nor do we see this people or its flag throughout history. There was never an independent Palestinian state, and Arabs in the area never flew this flag. A 1939 world atlas shows a flag of Palestine, that is, British Mandate Palestine. The British held the area not as a British colony, but for the express purpose of creating there a Jewish national home, in the Jews’ ancient homeland. Inconveniently for the historical revisionists who rule the public discourse today, the 1939 flag of Mandatory Palestine shows a banner featuring a star of David.

The Palestine Liberation Organization adopted the current Palestinian flag as its own only in 1964, the same year that it changed its name to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, in recognition of the newly created nationality it was supposedly dedicated to “liberating.” There was no Palestinian nationality before the 1960s, when it was invented in order to reposition what was then universally known as the Arab/Israeli conflict. Up to the invention of “Palestinians,” the Israelis were the tiny, besieged people amidst a huge number of hostile Arabs; after that invention, the “Palestinians” themselves became the tiny, besieged people against the big, bad Israelis. PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977:

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.

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Now that Sykes’ handiwork is the flag of the nonexistent nation of Palestine, one who chooses to wear it is making a specific and definite political statement. Someone committed to the cause enough to wear a Palestine flag around his waist as he attacks a synagogue is not just expressing pride in this fictional nation, but also solidarity with the Palestinians in their war against Israel, which, it should be remembered, they started, and wish to continue until there is a new genocide of the Jews. It is the banner of hatred, evil, and murder. That is why jihadis wave it with pride.