I should stick with “they” … for some reason I always pictured them as female. Don’t know why.
I teach religious school at my synagogue. We make art projects that feature Stars of David all the time. Usually in the center of some collage or other thing. It’s the natural place to feature it.
Yeah.
(You owe me a laptop.)
They’d go well with all the pink triangles there.
This first like with the Proud to Be Gaysian is a link to photos from the 2013 march. It seems the Dyke March organizers over the past couple of years have certainly strayed from a Lesbian group into a far left wing fringe group. The name of this year’s March was, ‘Organized Communities Against Deportation and Chicago Dyke March Collective.’
Scrolling through their Facebook, which is quite painful, they seem a combination of Black Lives Matter, splinter fringe groups who have tried to shut down traditional Pride parades, and immigration rights. I saw plenty of mentions of QTPOC, but not much about Lesbians. And, if I never see ‘cisheteropatriarchy’ ever again, I’ll be quite happy.
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What made me think “Israeli Flag” was not just that the MD was in the middle, but that it was the same size and that the lines appeared t be the same thickness as the MD on the Israeli flag. It was as if someone lifted it from that flag, and placed it on the Rainbow Flag.
Now, whoever did that might have been thinking: Hey, this says I’m Jewish and Gay. But just seeing the flag, you’re ignoring reality if you don’t accept that some people might see it and think: Hey, I’m Israeli and Gay.
Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those categories. Except if you’re planning to march in a parade that is organized to be anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian. And just to be clear, I’m generally a supporter of Israel. But not everyone is, and if they don’t want Israeli symbols in their parade, then that’s their prerogative. Just as it’s your prerogative to protest against them. I’d fully support anyone who wants to mark in that parade next year with a rainbow MD on a yellow armband or breast patch.
N.b.: And once again, I don’t agree with the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian stance. But if what the organizers say about the march is correct, then jumping to “antisemitism” from the meager info int he article is bogus.
Or, y’know, that if you’re putting a Star of David on a flag as the main drawn symbol on the flag, there’s a particular placement and boldness of line that makes the most graphic-design sense.
I don’t think anyone’s refusing to accept that “some people” might think that. People are just refusing to accept that that’s a reasonable interpretation.
When I heard about this incident, I at first assumed that it was a clear Israeli flag, and I thought, okay, not the way I’d roll, but if someone really dislikes the state of Israel’s current policies, that doesn’t render them antisemitic. But this isn’t a clear Israeli flag.
Its literally marketed as the “Israeli Pride flag.”
That’s an amazing coincidence.
Did you look at the flag in the link? The first thing I thought when I saw it was “Oh, Israeli Flag/Rainbow flag combo”. Am I not a reasonable person? (Don’t answer that! 
)
Is Amazon not a reasonable retailer?
I didn’t jump to “anti-Semitic.” I jumped to “more radical Lesbian monolithic, controlling BS that makes me nuts.”
Seriously: I was once accused of “disempowering” women because I said that I would only use evidence-based medicine, and no woo. An alarming number of lesbians, and quite a few straight feminists are heavily into woo.
Apparently, evidence-based medicine is a tool of the patriarchy.
I’ve seen claims that science is a tool of the patriarchy. People who believe that would be welcome to kiss my science degrees, 'cept that I don’t want the diplomas contaminated.
It was actually after I looked at both flags, one right after the other, that I decided it didn’t make sense to consider it an Israel flag.
:shrug. That’s true. However, Flylife Store, the company selling it at John’s link (Flylife Store) is a flag shop, not a Jewish shop. It looks like they find various designs of flags and print them and sell them; I’m not exactly sure they’re serious scholars of Judaism here.
What’s more important than what the flag’s manufacturers say is what the flag’s fliers say. I don’t see it as a flag of Israel; neither do they.
I’m Jewish. The star of David says “Jewish” to me, not “Israel”. The Israeli flag has two blue lines, as well as the star. The lines are important, because they echo a typical prayer shawl. The flag is a prayer shawl with a Jewish star in its middle.
The flag we are discussing is clearly an “LGBT Jew” flag, not an “LGBT Israeli” flag. That’s an important distinction, since a lot of Jews are uneasy about Israel.
So, it is marketed and sold as an Israeli Pride flag, but it is unreasonable to think of it as an Israeli Pride flag. That makes sense.
Most people are not Jewish. How does your perception inform us about the perception of people who are not Jewish as regards this particular flag?
Are you really unable to accept that two different people can perceive a thing differently?
I don’t see why it should matter either way.
But I don’t grasp the Israel/Palestine conflict so well.
What does being a “serious scholar of Judaism” have to do with anything? I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the Torah that counsels on how to interpret gay pride flags. That Amazon reseller isn’t the only place identifying that flag as specifically an “Israeli Pride flag,” btw. Here’s a wikimedia page that also identifies it as such. Here’s a stock photo company doing the same. There are certainly a lot of cites that identify the same flag as a “Jewish Pride flag,” as well, of course, but the idea that this flag specifically represents Israeli gay pride is not at all uncommon.
I’m not sure I agree with that. The interpretation of this flag is ambiguous, at best, and if your going to make a statement using an ambiguous symbol, I think you at least partly own the responsibility for people making incorrect interpretations about what you were trying to say.
Now to me the Star of David is simply the symbol of Jewish identity, and an interpretation that that flag is in any way exclusively a symbol of Israel is specious. But let’s assume that the march organizers honestly saw it as so. For the sake of discussion.
Most Arab cultures are horribly oppressive of gays, but of course Arabs for gay rights were welcomed … as they should be. China’s human rights record is pretty poor, including treatment of its gay citizens, but of course expressions of Chinese and Gay! would be welcome there, as it should be. Going with the belief that it was not completely insane to interpret the universal symbol of Jewish identity as “Israeli” (and that anyone flying the symbol is claiming “Israeli” not Jewish identity) it still seems insane to exclude Israeli intersection with gayness and gay pride.
But I will concede consistency … they apparently also excluded expressions of proud to be an American Dyke: American flags (I assume including ones with rainbow stripes and pink stars) were also apparently seen as “unsafe” and “triggering” for those oppressed. It apparently is not possible to be an intersection of patriotic and opposed to oppression and gay. “America” = oppressor. End. Advertising your Americanness along with your gayness is oppressive. Okay.
I am open to the interpretation that these are simply intolerant exclusionary hateful idiots with only implicit anti-Semitic and explicit anti-American beliefs but not explicitly anti-Semitic. (Yeah that “veers”.)
The drive of groups like this to turn a blind eye to horrible records on gay rightsby a variety of groups in an attempt to attach themselves to other “causes” and thus try to gain some relevance for themselves, is possibly just pathetic and not a consequence of explicit anti-Semitism.
As was BigT’s post’s misrepresentation and fabrication of the facts.
Just to be clear, no one in this thread is saying that. No one is saying that the flag in question must be seen as the flag of Israel and only the flag of Israel by everyone in the world. What some of us are saying is simply that seeing the flag of Israel in that flag is not unreasonable. And if you’re not Jewish, you probably don’t know about all the ins and outs of what separates Jewish symbolism from Israeli symbolism.
I probably know 10x more about Judaism than your average goy. I went to a school that was primarily Jewish, I have quite a few Jewish friends and I’ve been to Israel. But I didn’t know the Israeli flag was supposed to look like a prayer shawl.
How much did the parade organizers know about Judaism? Who knows? So why assume they must be anti-Semitic when there is another, reasonable interpretation. Maybe the are anti-Semitic, but we just don’t have enough info to say for sure. All I know is that I looked at the flag, and I saw a tie-in to the Israeli flag. I didn’t see the Israeli flag, but what looked like a hybrid of two flags. Would I insist that everyone see it the same way? No.
The Israeli flag isn’t “supposed to look like a prayer shawl.” Those typically have multiple stripes. The symbolism does evoke the symbolism of a prayer shawl, though.
If you saw a star on a flag and just assumed it was an Israeli thing that’s your error.
People get flag stuff mixed up constantly. Case in point: a picture I saw of a huge bonfire built in Northern Ireland for the purpose of burning the flag of the Ivory Coast.* What a bunch of folks in Belfast had against a small West African nation, I have no idea.
(As far as Amazon marketing it as an Israeli flag - a lot of Amazon listings put every possible keyword in the description in the hopes of getting a hit. I do think it’s a valid point, but it’s hardly probitive. )
- It’s the same as Ireland’s, but with the colors reversed.
You know what, I don’t care what other people thought it meant. There ought to be a “reasonable man” test (or I guess, a “reasonable dyke” test, in this case.)
But even if it WAS an Israeli flag, can an Israeli not also also celebrate her sexual orientation? Were there Palestinian flags? I bet lots of dykes are triggered by the flags of nations that actually oppress dykes.
The organizers did not act reasonably. Their actions made one of their own actually unsafe at an event where she should have been safe. Were they antisemites, or just some other flavor of asshole? I suspect some of both, but it doesn’t really matter. They acted in a way that made thousands of lesbians across the US feel unsafe at lesbian events. They made the world a worse place.