Most of us who live in large American cities have sickeningly been forced to witness some form of march or rally for the “Palestinians.” These radically sick protests march under the banner of “Free Palestine,” or “Cease Fire,” and even “LGBTQ for Palestinians.” The collective chant of “From the River to the Sea” can be seen and heard across all forms of media and has become a nauseating part of American life. But now, the clarion call of the “Free Palestine” movement has graduated into something even more sinister and dangerous. You can now see the “Palestinian” flag almost everywhere because it has metastasized into the fabric of mainstream American culture to the point where, rather than being a symbol of hatred for America and Israel, you can see it on the backpacks of American teenagers, bumper stickers, and probably, in the not-too-distant future, on cereal boxes.
It is important that people understand that the “Palestinian” flag stands for the hatred and destruction of Israel and, by association, America. It stands for the murder of Americans, Israelis, Jews, and Christians everywhere, along with the destruction of Western civilization, true democracy, capitalism, and ultimately, civilization itself.
Popular culture in America can make a bumper sticker out of any piece of cultural raw material. The best example of evil on a T-shirt in American cultural history was when Andy Warhol created his Mao and Che Guevara T-shirts, two colorfully popular designs that have adorned bodies and walls in the form of posters for decades. Warhol, through his “pop art” masterpieces, made two mass murderers into superstars forever.
Hannah Arendt, when writing about Adolf Eichmann (the architect of the “Final Solution”) during his trial in 1961, described him as the embodiment of the banality of evil. Eichmann, during the trial, incessantly repeated his “just following orders” mantra. He was a small, bald man in glasses who, to any passerby on the street or in the grocery store, looked just like another harmless, gentle face in the crowd, not the mass murderer he was.
Just like Eichmann, the “Palestinian” flag being displayed on children’s backpacks, on jean jackets, and in public spaces in thousands of ways and places has taken a symbol of pure evil and made it a part of our popular culture. On some level, the sickness of accepting the “Palestinian” flag as anything more than a symbol of the October 7th murder of Israelis, Americans, and others has numbed the sense of civilization so much that terrorists have become emboldened to raise the Hamas flag in our public spaces.
It is important that we all understand what the “Palestinian” flag stands for, and it isn’t truth, justice, or The American Way. As we all know, or should know, the “Palestinian” flag stands for hostage-taking, murder, and advocacy for the destruction of the American Way.
We all know about the big stuff—the rallies, the speeches, the terrorizing of Jewish students on American college campuses. But when you start to see the “Palestinian” flag on children’s lunchboxes, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and in all of America’s common places and spaces, you know that evil is everywhere—even on Main Street USA.
-Emes