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In Israel, displaying the Palestinian flag can draw the attention of police. Authorities have confiscated flags and detained demonstrators, saying the symbol can threaten public order. Critics call it an attack on free speech. NPR's Itay Stern reports from Tel Aviv.
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing in non-English language).
ITAY STERN, BYLINE: Protesters play the Palestinian anthem at this Nakba Day rally at Tel Aviv University last month. Nakba, or catastrophe, is the Palestinian term for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 war that erupted around the creation of the state of Israel.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
STERN: Students shout pro-Palestinian chants and hold signs and symbols in the colors of the Palestinian flag. But one thing is missing - the flag itself. Police warned organizers not to bring it.
ALEEN NASSRA: If you have any Palestinian flag, we're going to come and take it, and we'll have arresting. We want to protect our students. But they're forbidding us from holding the flag.
STERN: Aleen Nassra helped organize the rally. She is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, a community that makes up about 20% of the population. Nearby, Siba Ayadat holds an ukelele painted in white, green, red and black of the Palestinian flag. She says the restrictions go beyond a flag.
SIBA AYADAT: They try to tell us that our lives matter less, that our nationality matters less, that Palestine doesn't exist and Palestinians don't exist. And I am here to say that we do exist.
SHAY ROSENGARTEN: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: Across the street, counter demonstrators, members of a right-wing nationalist group, wave Israeli flags. Organizer Shay Rosengarten screams while pointing at the Palestinians.
ROSENGARTEN: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: "You all should kiss the Israeli flag." Rosengarden says, for him, the Palestinian flag is not a symbol of national identity, but of hostility towards the Jewish state.
ROSENGARTEN: Every time they are waving this flag, they are calling for intifada. They are calling for riots and revolts against the states of - the state of Israel. So this is an enemy flag.
STERN: The idea that the Palestinian flag itself constitutes incitement has become increasingly accepted under Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. On his political party's YouTube page, he posts this video praising police for arresting an Arab citizen accused of painting a Palestinian flag on a police station.
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ITAMAR BEN-GVIR: (Non-English language spoken).
STERN: "There is no one who will incite against the state and be allowed to get away with it. Those days are over," he says. "Those who incite will be arrested."
Perhaps the most unusual case involved Alex Sinclair, a religious Jewish educator who wears a kippah, or Jewish skullcap. It's embroidered with both the Israeli and Palestinian flags. Earlier this year, an Israeli reported him to the police. Officers detained him and took him to the station. Hours later, he was released, but his kippah had been permanently altered.
ALEX SINCLAIR: The policewoman who was in charge went back into the police station, cut out the Palestinian flag from the kippah and then gave it back to me as sort of, you know, a kind of mutilated kippah.
STERN: Rights groups say cases like Sinclair's reflect political pressure rather than the law. Keren Saar, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, says there is no legal ban on the flag, but police insist they are just preserving the public order.
KEREN SAAR: We are seeing that the police is almost oblivion for freedom of speech and freedom of identity and freedom of expression and freedom of protest.
STERN: Israeli police did not respond to an NPR request for comment and said they could not discuss the Sinclair case because it's still under investigation.
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).
STERN: But for Aleen Nassra, the organizer of the Nakba Day rally, police restrictions are unlikely to make the symbol disappear.
NASSRA: Maybe they're forbidding us to have the flag, but we're going to have a way to have the flag in the sky at some point.
STERN: We will not let Israel erase our land or our identity, she says. For NPR News, I'm Itay Stern in Tel Aviv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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