I will begin this opinion article with a statement of fact; Israel did not hold a flag day march in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Israel does not have ‘flag day’. The march through Jerusalem on Tuesday was the Jerusalem Day parade postponed five weeks due to racist Palestinian violence. Any media that reported on a right-wing flag parade was parroting racist Jew-hating propaganda and should be censured. This includes all mainstream media that I am aware of.

It began two months ago with screams that Israel was ethnically cleansing the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Not only was this factually inaccurate but the opposite was true. Anyone who supported the Palestinian claim was, in fact, calling for ethnically cleansing the Jews from an area of Jerusalem that had been significant to Jews since Simon the Just was buried there in the Second Temple Period, well before Muhammad was ever born. The anti-Israel claim was that even though the Jews had proven ownership of the properties, they should not be permitted to live there or even collect rent. Because they were Jews.

This was followed by Palestinian riots on the Temple Mount. What were they angry about? Jews had been prohibited from even visiting the site during the final stages of Ramadan. As Jerusalem Day approached, it was clear that Jews would want access to the site. Equality was not even up for discussion. Jews have never had equal rights to visit the site or equal rights to worship at the site. What the Arabs were rioting for was to prevent Jews from visiting their holiest site ever again.

The violent riots reached a crescendo on Jerusalem Day and the Palestinian violence was taken up by Hamas rockets targeting the city they claim to hold as dear and religious. So the Jerusalem Day festivities were postponed. Palestinian violence in the form of mobs attacking Jews in Israeli cities and thousands of rockets fired with the expressed intent of murdering Jews continued for the next two weeks.

And all during these attempts to kill Israelis, the anti-Israel media decried the fact that Hamas was killing more Palestinians with their rockets than Jews. Even worse, the Jews actually had the temerity to defend themselves. Some elements in the media actually noted that Jews were not so subhuman that we did not have the right to defend ourselves. But only some.

Make no mistake; this was not some form of generic anti-Zionism distinguishable from Jew-hatred. Jews all over Europe, Great Britain, and the US were attacked by mobs and synagogues vandalized.

So it should be celebrated as a small victory that violence did not take over the agenda and a parade celebrating Jerusalem would take place, albeit five weeks late. The problem, of course, is that a celebration of Jews in Jerusalem raises images of King David, the Jewish Temples, and the entire basis for Jerusalem existing. And this is precisely what the anti-Israel forces cannot allow.

So the Jerusalem Day parade was transformed in the media to something which, like the Palestinian nation, has never existed but which fits the left-wing narrative; a flag parade. And flags are a display of nationalism which has become a code word for racism. It does not matter that the agenda opposing the “flag parade” is focused on ethnic cleansing of the Jews from the Middle East. Labeling it a flag parade also served the purpose of turning the event into an entirely new political enterprise of right-wing extremists and allowed the tiny issue of Arab violence to be conveniently overlooked. Which explains how the media semi-justified threats of violence that came from the Palestinians, even those currently serving in the Knesset. Arab anger at this new Zionist attempt to conquer Jerusalem was understandable, to the media.

So the concept of ‘Flag Day’ became a winner in the media, despite its clear challenge to anyone with a memory exceeding that of a goldfish.