Beverly Hills schools wanted to fly the Israeli flag – but not to support the Jewish state

By Hannah Feuer
September 2, 2025

Debates over whether the Israeli flag represents the Jewish people or the Jewish state — and whether the two can be separated — aren’t exactly standard fare for a school board meeting.

But that was the discussion in Beverly Hills last week, when the school board voted 3-2 to display the Israeli flag at its public schools during Jewish American Heritage Month.

All five board members initially supported flying the flags, but after criticism from local Palestinian activists, the board revised its resolution to say the display was meant to show support for the “Jewish community” rather than the “Jewish state,” according to the LA Times. The superintendent then overruled the board, citing “heightened safety concerns” and canceling the plan.

This was not the only incident involving the Israeli flag in recent weeks. In Philadelphia, an Israeli flag outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History was vandalized twice in just over a week. After initially planning to replace the Israeli flag with a “hostage-focused sign,” the museum reversed course and said it would rehang the flag.

And in Quebec, a man is facing charges after burning an Israeli flag that was hanging outside a town hall building. Earlier this month, a Jewish resident, Adam Ben David, started a petition to take down the flag, writing that “raising the flag at town hall effectively removes each Hampstead citizen’s ability to express their personal stance on Israel.”

What does the flag represent?

As the Israeli flag has increasingly become a political flashpoint, it has raised a series of thorny questions: Can targeting the Israeli flag be a legitimate form of political protest, or is it inherently antisemitic? How does the Star of David on the flag — a more explicit symbol of Jewish identity — complicate that determination? And does the context in which an Israeli flag is displayed — say, at a protest versus a synagogue — matter?

“The Israeli flag has its ambiguity, because it’s obviously the flag of a country, but it’s also been used as a more general flag representing the Jewish people, and it’s been used to represent Jewish religion,” said Perry Dane, a professor at Rutgers Law School and a member of the North American Vexillological Association, an organization devoted to the study of flags.

Those fraught questions have recently found their way into the courtroom. In August, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled that the Star of David on an Israeli flag “symbolizes the Jewish race”; he therefore considered an attack on a counterprotester wearing the Israeli flag to be “racially motivated.” Meanwhile, the defense argued that attacking the Israeli flag was anti-Israel, not antisemitic.

Judge McFadden’s reasoning sparked online chatter about whether attacking a person wearing the flag of a country with the Islamic crescent would be considered Islamophobic. In a statement to the Forward, Matthew Mainen, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said that he didn’t think that analogy held.

“Israel, unlike the many Muslim countries, is singularly associated with the Jewish people,” he said. “Pakistan, Tunisia, and Libya, all with Islamic symbology on their flags, do not have the same connotations. None are the world’s only Muslim state.”

Still, the Israeli flag is far from the only banner to spark controversy. Flags of all kinds carry political connotations beyond national pride. Burning the American flag has long been a protected form of political protest, often associated with anti-war sentiments. (The Trump administration recently sought to deport noncitizens who burn flags, even though the Supreme Court has twice ruled such acts are protected speech.)

Along with Israeli flags, Palestinian, American and Ukrainian flags have all been vandalized in the past year. Non-state flags, including Rainbow Pride flags and Black Lives Matter flags, have also been repeatedly targeted.

Nor is the Israeli flag the only one that represents both a religion and a state. The flag of Vatican City, for example, is also seen as a symbol of Catholic identity and faith.

“All flags, or most flags, evoke very, very strong feelings,” Dane said. “None of this is entirely unique to either Jews or Israel or Zionism or antisemitism.”

In Israel, the national flag has taken on very different meanings. The flag became a symbol of protest during demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the judicial system in 2023.

The protesters “very intentionally waved lots and lots of Israeli flags, because what they wanted to emphasize is that they were the voice of Israel. They were the voice of Zionism,” Dane said. “It was, from their point of view, a demonstration that tried to promote what they considered to be the most authentic Israeli values.”

Meanwhile, it’s far rarer to see Americans protesting the U.S. government while holding the national flag, Dane said.

Illustrative of these many interpretations: Dane once gave a presentation in his synagogue about the Israeli flag, and he polled the crowd about what the flag meant to them. Most said Israel, but some said Judaism.

“The same flag could represent the state of Israel, could represent Zionism, could represent Jewish nationality, could represent Jewish religion,” Dane said. “Some of these ambiguities are just built in.”