The members of the PVD City Council who asked on May 14 to fly a Palestinian Arab flag in their chamber and in front of City Hall, and held a May 16 sidewalk ceremony attended by cheering supporters, engaged in an act of clueless privilege: They are not threatened by terrorists whose explicitly stated goal is to kill them all; they did not experience an invasion by murderers, kidnappers, and rapists; their ancestors were not persecuted for thousands of years unto the present day. They and their supporters, many of them college students, live in a free society enjoying economic prosperity and safety, hiding in a cocoon of unreality from their perspective of, in a word, privilege.
Wikipedia has pages dedicated to topics like “Violent incidents in reaction to the Gaza war” and “Antisemitism during the Gaza war” – for American Jews, the blaring message is, “You are here.” We have no “safe spaces.”
The Palestinian flag is derived from that of the Arab revolt in 1916, widely understood to have been inspired by a 13th-Century Arabic war poem: “White are our deeds, black are our battles, green are our fields, red are our swords.” The flag was banned by the British in Mandatory Palestine during the Arab revolt beginning in 1936 and then, once World War II began in 1939, during the Palestinian Arab alliance with Nazi Germany. It is doubtful the PVD City Council even knows they are harkening to violent images of “battles” and “swords.”
May 14 is the national day commemorating the Declaration of Independence in 1948 that brought the State of Israel into existence. “The timing of the flag display coincides with Nakba Day, which translates to ‘Day of Catastrophe’ and commemorates what Palestinians view as a tragedy associated with the founding of the State of Israel. Nakba Day is not Palestinian Independence Day, nor is it internationally recognized. It is a deeply political observance and a pointed commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island in a statement. “Following the horrific acts of terror carried out against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, we have witnessed a wave of local protests targeting Israel. While organizers often state their support for Palestinians and peace in Gaza, many of these demonstrations have included rhetoric that is not just critical of Israeli policy, but explicitly opposes the existence of the State of Israel. In some cases, this rhetoric has crossed into antisemitism.” The Hamas attack coincided with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, celebrated with joyous singing and dancing.
Gary Sasse, a long-serving RI civic leader who in the past headed state government departments and the Public Expenditure Council, wrote on his personal Twitter/X feed, “What if Germans or Japanese requested [that] their flag be flown over PVD City Hall in 1944? What would the PVD Mayor and [City Council] have done?”
PVD Mayor Brett Smiley said in a statement on May 15:
In recent years, the rise of antisemitism has hit home here in Providence, where our Jewish neighbors have increasingly felt targeted by statements, protests, and demonstrations. I am proud to be a member of our city’s Jewish community, and I renounce in the strongest terms any actions and rhetoric designed to sow the seeds of hatred and division.
Unfortunately, yesterday the Providence City Council fanned these flames by flying the Palestinian flag in its chambers and inviting our community to a flag-raising ceremony at City Hall tomorrow. I want to be clear that my office does not have the authority to prevent a separate, independent branch of government from expressing differing views – just as I did not consult with them two weeks ago when I raised the Israeli flag to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. I have worked hard to ensure our local Jewish community feels safe and welcomed, and I am disappointed that the City Council would use their position of leadership to further ignite tensions in our city.
The PVD City Council has consistently chosen to become enmeshed in the Arab–Israeli conflict, previously making a proposal to divest city investments from Israel that the mayor promised to veto if adopted. The council’s chief of staff, June Rose, who is not an elected official, was arrested at anti-Israel protests in New York City and Washington, DC. Miguel Sanchez, an elected member of the council, was fired from his state political job following his anti-Israel Twitter/X post ten days after the Hamas attack on Oct 7, saying the US “is actively aiding in a genocide and they want us to look the other way.” (Israel did not start its ground invasion of Gaza until a week after Sanchez’ post.) Following the firing, Republican City Committee Co-Chairman David Talan wrote in a news release, “Councilman Sanchez’ resolution, and his social media postings, parrot the language of the supporters of Palestinian terror from the US progressive left.”
About a week after the Palestinian flag flew at City Hall, Smiley issued an executive order setting forth the city’s first flag policy, restricting other than official flags (the nation, the state, the city, and the POW/MIA flags) to only “Flags of Governments Recognized by the United States” and “Flags Displayed in Conjunction with Official Events or Ceremonies as Announced by Mayoral Proclamation or City Council Resolution.” Without a formal policy, the flagpoles were open to all on an equal-access basis, according to a US Supreme Court decision, so the executive order prevents that by stating “it is also important to clearly establish and demarcate that the City’s flagpoles are not intended to serve as a forum for free expression by the public.” Because the Palestinian flag is not that of a government recognized by the United States and was flown at the request of individual members, the inference is that repeating this in future would require an official council resolution.
There is a First Amendment right to stand on the sidewalk shouting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” an antisemitic call to exterminate the State of Israel, and, “Globalize the intifada,” a call to murder Jews in Providence or Boston by sending suicide bombers to blow up buses and cafés. There is even a First Amendment right to shout “Gas the Jews.” But why would any decent people, let alone elected officials, throw in with such violent sentiments?
A month before the PVD City Hall ceremony, on Apr 13, a man set fire to the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Gov. Josh Shapiro was asleep with his wife and children. The governor is Jewish: it was the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover and the room destroyed by arson is where he hosted a Seder meal hours earlier. According to a police affidavit, the accused arsonist, “Related that Governor Josh SHAPIRO needs to know that he ‘…will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.’” He “told police he planned to beat Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he encountered him after breaking into the building,” according to court documents. Many were reminded of the deadliest attack against Jews on American soil, not far away in Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct 27, 2018, where 11 congregants were shot to death by a man who “had long been steeped in antisemitism and methodically carried out the attack”.
A few days after the PVD City Hall ceremony, on May 21, two people were shot to death on the street as they were leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Comittee at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The shooter could not know that they were both employees of the Israeli embassy to the United States; they were a couple, and the boyfriend, Yaron Lischinsky, had bought a ring and planned to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim, the weekend after what turned out to be their murders; Sarah was an American Jew and Yaron was a dual citizen of Germany and Israel. All the shooter knew, or cared about, was they had attended a Jewish-oriented event. According to reports, Sarah was not killed by the first several shots that hit her, but as she struggled to crawl away the shooter continued firing. As the accused murderer was led away by police in front of video cameras, he shouted, “Intifada revolution!” and, “Free, Free Palestine!”
Two weeks after the PVD City Hall ceremony, a few hours before the Jewish holiday of Shavuot would begin at sunset on Jun 1, Mohamed Sabry Soliman is alleged to have committed a federal hate crime and 42 state felonies for a fire-bombing in Boulder, Colorado, injuring 15 peaceful protesters walking to express sympathy for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Members of the group, a national organization called Run for Your Life, are about 80% Jewish but not exclusively so. One of the protesters, an 82 year-old Jewish woman, died from her injuries on Jun 30. According to the FBI affidavit supporting the hate crime charge, “In the black plastic container were at least fourteen unlit Molotov cocktails… containing clear liquid and red rags hanging out of the bottles. Near the black plastic container was a backpack weed sprayer, potentially containing a flammable substance [as a makeshift flamethrower]. The clear liquid in the glass bottles and weed sprayer were determined to be 87 octane gasoline…” The FBI affidavit continues, “He stated that he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead… [and] stated he would do it (conduct an attack) again. He specifically targeted the ‘Zionist Group’ that had gathered in Boulder having learned about the group from an online search.” The FBI affidavit states, “When he threw the Molotov cocktails, SOLIMAN yelled ‘Free Palestine!’ and the Molotov cocktails ignited in the crowd of people, causing burn injuries…”
According to the ADL “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024,”
…A majority of antisemitic incidents (58%, or 5,452 incidents) included elements related to Israel or Zionism… ADL does not consider criticism of Israel or general anti-Israel activism to be antisemitic and does not count such incidents in the Audit. But increasingly, extreme actors in the anti-Israel space have incorporated antisemitic rhetoric into their activism, and it has become commonplace for perpetrators across the political spectrum to voice hatred of Israel or conspiracy theories about the state in a range of antisemitic attacks.
A few months ago at the Jewish Alliance building in Providence, I attended the one-year anniversary memorial commemoration of the Oct 7 attack by Hamas against Israel. The police presence was massive: There were police cars several blocks up and down Elmgrove Avenue, there were armed police on the sidewalk and inside the building wearing bulletproof vests, and there was what looked to be a discreet bomb disposal unit.
If all of those people raising Palestinian flags, including the PVD City Council members and their cheerleaders, are so peaceful, why do Jews – just because they are Jews – need so much protection against being shot and firebombed?