I'm surprised that it took until day three to have an incident that involved the authorities.

Well done, Lulie, I'm sure Israel is proud to have friends like you.

Thank You for supporting Israel and the Jewish people in their`s, many will say, worst moments in recent history.

It takes a lot of courage, to demonstrate a support the way You chose to. May it be that Hashem, God of Israel, bless You with His closeness for ever. Amen!

Natan Sharansky would be proud of you. I am, too. :)

I much admire your courage and convictions. I wish I had had such clarity of conviction when I was 17. Do not fear, and do not let yourself be silenced.

(BTW, your reference to Galileo is only partly correct, and I encourage you to read more about the actual case. He was charged by the church for teaching heliocentrism as fact, rather than as theory (which it was, at the time); and astronomical research, including the advancement of heliocentric studies, continued quite vigorously.)

Good luck!

Thanks for supporting Israel, especially as you're not Jewish! It's heart-warming.

Frankly, you've got more guts than I. I'm Jewish, and I live in New York, and I would never appear in daylight with an Israeli flag. You put me to shame.

I think your country actually passed the test really well. Look at it this way: There was only one guy who bothered you (ok, he was joined by a friend, once). I thought there'd be crowds brandishing their fists. However, much the response was encouraging, I wouldn't do this just anywhere. For instance, I wouldn't go into immigrant neighborhoods. That would be another thing altogether. It's one thing to be brave and another to be suicidal. There may indeed be hostile crowds in neighborhoods like that, and they would consider intimidating you as their own practice of "freedom of speech."

I just realized that you were walking around Oxford, a university town! That was brave, as universities are generally hotbeds of anti-Israeli feeling. Maybe you didn't hit so much hostility because you did this during the summer and not during the academic year, when studients, profs, etc. would be around.

Try showing homosexual affection (no kissing, just holding hands) in certain neighbourhoods. Well, maybe works if you're a girl; I don't know.

Thanks for the support, and inspiration, Lulie! As long as Britain has folks like you fighting for her, all is not lost!

Thank you all for your kind and encouraging words.

To a reader and Joanne: I see what you're saying, but I think this is a bit different. I wasn't trying to provoke anyone, or even confront anyone like ProtestWarrior do. I wasn't going to any particular parts of town where I knew there were violently anti-Israeli people. I was just expressing a view peacefully in the most public area of town. The Town Square test is not about whether you can go to an immigrant neighbourhood waving an Israeli flag in their faces and expecting everyone there not to bother you; it's about whether you can go to the town square -- where every subculture of that community goes -- and express your view peacefully without fear of harm. I don't mean it's acceptable for assault to happen anywhere, but that's not what the Town Square test is about. For one to be unable to go to the most public place in town and express an opinion means that one is unable to express that opinion, full stop. It means that there is no room for criticism on the way that society thinks and acts on things.

By the way, reader: I've seen gay men in Oxford holding hands. It's not a big deal here. At least in the city centre -- it might be in the Muslim areas.

"The Town Square test is not about whether you can go to an immigrant neighbourhood waving an Israeli flag in their faces and expecting everyone there not to bother you; it's about whether you can go to the town square -- where every subculture of that community goes -- and express your view peacefully without fear of harm...For one to be unable to go to the most public place in town and express an opinion means that one is unable to express that opinion, full stop."

Thanx for supporting Israel.............we need it with all the islamocrap attacking us from all sides. Dont let these bastards scare you from freedom of speech. Keep up the good work and you should also take pics of anyone that threatens you.

Good luck,

Jay

Fair enough, Lulie, but I didn't mean to imply that you were being provocative in any manner. What I meant was that some people don't need much to be provoked. The fault would've been theirs, not yours. Anyway, maybe it's my squeamishness talking. Best wishes.

I really want to thank you for being so supportive of Israel. I am a proud Jewish girl living in Canada and while i have seen a few cars driving around with Irsaeli flags recently, i myself do not have the courage to do what you have done (which is a very sad thing).

I am glad that you have been able to stay safe and that you have had quite a few positive experiences. My cousin lives in the UK and i will tell him to be on the lookout for you if he is ever in Oxford!

It takes some courage, I would shake your hand if I saw you in public.

Hey there,

I found this website through Solomon's. I am a Canadian Jew. I must say that I am so amazed by you. You have tremendous courage and I commend you. Thank you for your support.

Justin.

Yep: I was thinking of Muslim neighbourhoods. Not everyone knows to keep their fists to themselves.

As for wearing that flag: I don't count myself among the supporters of creating the state of Israel in 1948. None the less, if anyone attacked you for wearing that flag while I was nearby, I would launch a Voltairean counterassault on them.

As for the continued existence of the state of Israel today, that's a different matter. Let all those who support return to matters as of 100 years ago as a matter of knee-jerk reflex look at Yugoslavia - or (former?) Kurd territory for that matter. A wrong may have been done, but you don't make it right by committing yet another wrong. Chasing history and historical national and religious borderlines is essentially a pastime for fascists ("remember "Mare Nostrum"); leave things alone.

But in any case, I defend your right to wear that flag, and smile at seeing your brave heart.

Reader: Please read our Short History of Israel and disabuse yourself of the misconceptions that currently inform your judgement of Israel's legitimacy in 1948. The Voltaireian impulse that would have you defend Lulie today would have been the least of several overwhelming moral reasons to support the creation of Israel in 1948 – and the Jewish National Home before that. It saved hundreds of thousands from genocide and millions from oppression, created incalculable good in practically every sphere of human endeavour, and wronged no one. The only wrongs that were done in 1948, and have been done since, were the vicious attempts to prevent that, and their consequences.

Thank you for your link. Interesting reading and somewhat (but not totally) different than what I had hitherto believed history to be. I'll read more.

A retro-historical question that might seem silly: Why choose that precise site for a jewish state when the most virulent anti-jewish sentiments are to be found precisely among your new neighbours? I am not talking "rights" nor, nor ignorance of pre-Roman history. I just wonder why one would choose to settle land among one's worst enemies.

You're very welcome.

Why choose that precise site...?

As you will see when you read further, there were many reasons, of which it is hard to pick a pre-eminent one. Several other possible sites were considered by Zionists during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, of which we mention two in our Brief History: One was Uganda, which was briefly the majority choice in the Zionist movement. As this example shows, the stereotype of the Zionist movement as being driven by religiously-based irredentism is very wide of the mark. The scheme was never implemented, partly because it would have required a degree of organisational cooperation from the British that was, in the event, never forthcoming. Also that idea was overtaken by events as tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from the mass murders in Russia voted with their feet for Palestine. (Note that, at the time, and for several decades afterwards, the Jewish people had worse enemies than the Arabs, and very few friends who were in a position to help: it was far from being a case of 'settling among your worst enemies'.) The other was Alaska, which never became a refuge because the US Congress resolutely refused permission. Remember, casual antisemitism was endemic in the West at the time.

Other pertinent reasons were: that there was already a Jewish community in Palestine, small but culturally significant because of its long history and its tradition of Jewish scholarship. Also, of course, that there were many sites there of historical and religious significance to the Jewish people. Many of these were in Jerusalem, the holy city of the Jewish religion, which had had a Jewish majority since 1850. Then, also, there was the consideration that the safe haven for Jews would have to be a place where the existing non-Jewish population would benefit economically from an influx of Jews [of course, almost anywhere would have benefited, but that was not understood under the then-prevailing socialist economic consensus], and where, as the Balfour Declaration said, no one's civil or political rights would be adversely affected.

While none of these and other reasons would have been decisive in itself, taken together they left no other sane choice. Indeed, the whole thing happened too late. Had the State of Israel been founded a mere ten years earlier, it might well have saved millions from the Holocaust instead of merely hundreds of thousands.

Love this idea Lulie but in the interests of fairness could you try the same experiment wearing the flag of Iran? Or maybe that of Hezbollah? (Not a nation state or a particularly attractive organisation in my eyes but nevertheless.)

I am sure that the vast majority of people won't even recognise these flags but I would be curious as to the reactions of those that do.

I would be willing to bet that should the police become involved they would tell you to take it off.

I understand why you might guess that's how it is. But the facts are not like that.

http://www.girlontheright.com/2006/08/hezbollah-on-our-streets-in-our-cities.html

it made me angry that they asked us to move, because "we were putting their guys in danger". Us? If there was danger, it didn't come from our side. Later on, when someone showed up with a Hezbollah flag, we pointed out to one of the cops that Hezbollah is recognized in Canada as a terror organization, and that man should be arrested.

At this rally, as usual, the potentially violent hezbollah supporters are left alone by the cops while the Israel supporters are told to get out of the way.

As to wearing flags ... as mentioned in the quote, someone had a Hezbollah flag even though it's apparently illegal in Canada to wave flags of terrorist organizations. But despite it being illegal, the cops still wouldn't stop it.

-- Elliot Temple
http://www.curi.us/blog/

Take your point Elliot, but a demonstration is a completely different circumstance.

I would be interested in the attitudes of 'ordinary' people on the street when presented with a non-threatening individual carrying a flag that is very much regarded as threatening in our society, much as the Israeli flag is to some. (Not me I hasten to add.)

Well done Lulie!

A demonstration is indeed a different circumstance and does not directly address the town-square-test issue. Nevertheless, scenes like this are nowadays frequently seen in Britain and would seem to make it implausible that the British police would harrass an otherwise nonthreatening person solely for wearing a Hezbollah flag in a 'town square' situation. It is still more implausible, on general grounds, that in Britain such a person would have cause to fear assault by supporters of Israel, for that is simply not a stance that is condoned, let alone adopted, by such factions.

Having said that, the two situations would not, in fact, be remotely comparable. Supporters of Iran and of islamic terrorist organisations frequently threaten actual violence, against British people, in Britain. For instance, there are the threats against Salman Rushdie's life, and the repeated threats to behead infidels, bring 9-11 to Britain and so on. And there has been actual mass murder, and attempted mass murder, of British people, in Britain, in the names of those causes. If British law were to ban the incitement to commit such acts, whether by wearing flags or otherwise, this would in no way violate the town square test.

Editor

Again you have chosen an image of someone demonstrating. To say that this scene occurs frequently in the UK is a huge exaggeration. Last year I lived in Birmingham I have family in Bradford (Both areas with significant Muslim populations) who I visited regularly and I can say I that I have never seen anyone wearing a Hezbollah t-shirt or carrying an Iranian flag. I am not saying it doesn't happen but it certainly doesn't happen frequently.

Mike

PS. Could you make the verification questions slightly more challenging please. Just about anybody can post here!

I am also not saying that it is supporters of Israel necessarily who may attack the person but ordinary British citizens, or maybe even more moderate Muslims who don't want to be associated with the actions of extremists. If Lulie in this case succeeeded then that would be great, however until the experiment is undertaken we have no proof either way.

I am merely interested in the reaction of people to flags, and there meaning.

Are you not even slightly curious?

Mike, if you are so curious why don't you do it?

hmmm... i'm not too sure about this Israeli flag thing.

i'm mean, not everyone , in everyday situations, walks around with a flag draped around them.

a much better test would be a t-shirt, with the Israel flag on it , or maybe "i support the IDF" on it.

an interesting experiment would be to do the town square test using two different t-shirts - do the first test with an israeli t-shirt, then do another with a hezbollah or PLO style t-shirt.

Record the reactions, what happens, etc...

oh sorry - i forgot to say - well done!
it sure is a very very interesting (and brave!) experiment you have conducted.

Supporters of Israel , like myself, in the UK, really need to push this one. Or have the Islamists stolen the agenda in our country to such an extent that it is now dangerous to express support for Israel openly? I dearly hope it is not.

Hezbollah's flag depicts a machine gun because that's what Hezbollah is.

Israel's flag depicts a shield because that's what Israel is.

good point.
i cant add anymore to that...

Remember Cambridge is quite an international city with the university and everything. I think that if you walked through any other town/city in Britain you would have a
much stronger response.

Thank you for supporting Israel, Peace, and Democracy!

I'm afraid I wouldn't recommend you to do that in the centre of Birmingham, England's second city. That would be risky. There are many repesentatives of a certain peaceful religion in Brum.

Mike and archduke:

Consider the moral implications of the 'experiment' you are suggesting.

As we wrote, this event was primarily an expression of a political opinion and only secondarily an application of the town square test to Britain.

The opinion being expressed was a morally right one even though it is, alas, unpopular. Expressing it was a noteworthy event for many reasons. As some of the discussions that this has raised on other blogs, and several of the coments on this thread, show, it has caused people to re-examine their own criteria for expressing their support for Israel, and to reconsider their own assessments of a society in which revealing one's support for Israel is an act of bravery.

Expressing the opposite opinion in the same way would be morally wrong to at least the same degree as expressing this opinion was morally right. Neither the principle of freedom of speech nor that of scientific curiosity erases the distinction between right and wrong. In this case it is the distinction between incidentally offending people who support mass murderers, and deliberately contributing to the intimidation of people who support their victims. Doing the latter would be indefensible.

In answer to your question Mike, no, we are not curious because, for the reasons we gave above among others, we are in no doubt that you are mistaken in your belief that British police would forcibly remove an Iranian or Hezbollah flag if displayed under similar circumstances.

ah yes of course.

well explained Editor. thanks.

(and i do love those maths questions when submitting - helps the braincells... very novel.)

OK, editor I will go with that.

A reader, I would have thought the reason I would not do it was obvious, I am a lilly livered, yellow bellied piece of skirt!

Bloody hell, 8X6. That is a tough one.

I live in Israel and am trying to picture what would happen if a citizen (Muslim or Jew) wore a Palestinian flag in public. I think it would be met with suspicion if not outright harassment, and in some cases / areas, violence. For this I'm ashamed. re a Hezbollah flag -- forget it in Jewish areas, although it would be OK in Arab towns. For this, though, I'm not ashamed: They're out-and-out terrorists. Way to go, Lulie!

Stick to your principles - and don't allow others to put you down.

Well done. Never be afraid to voice your opinion in a free country. The trouble is tha England is all that free today and has double standards. The next time you go into town and want to wear the flag may I suggest that you take a few "heavies" with you and keep them in the background but close at hand and hope that the guy who previously threatened you "tries is luck" again. If he does let the 'heavies" teach him a lesson he wont forget. Good luck and Israel thanks you for your support.

Lulie: I did the same in Buenos Aires, Argentina last month. It made me feel proud and awkward at the same time but it was worth it. Nothing happened although the people looked strange.
In Buenos Aires

It is really worth it. Thank you for your tale and I hope the guy gets arrested for threats.

At my blog, I'm proposing merging this experiment with the "mass lone protest evening"...

Well done, of course, Lulie, but if you're going to do that sort of thing then it's high time you looked into taking some martial arts classes. Krav Maga would be in keeping with your Israeli theme, and it also has the advantage of being pretty widespread, well-taught, and practical.

This is a great idea and I admire you for publicly standing up for Israel.

It seems a little harsh to say that Britain as a whole "is failing the town square test". It sounds as if pretty much all the harassment was from just one persistent individual who kept popping up. He sounds like a stalker and I hope the police follow up with him, but that's not the same as society in general being intolerant.

Out of curiosity, did that one guy (and his friend who appeared later) appear to be Muslim?

People walk around freely around England wearing the kaffiyah - the (unofficial but widely recognised) PLO symbol - an organisation whose charter endorses genocide. Nobody dares challenge them. Fact.

Well done, Lulie!

Dear Lulie,

I am very grateful for what you have done. Can you please elaborate as to what happened with the police? And are you planning on coming to the Washington, D.C. area any time soon?

Infidel: Yeah, the main guy seemed to be Muslim. I didn't see the other guy much, so I'm not sure.

As for what happened with the police: they came over and took a statement from me and the friend who phoned the police. Later, they phoned me to ask me to come in to see if I could identify the guy. They showed me some pictures of people who it might be, but none were him. They're currently in the process of checking the CCTV cameras for him.

I've actually seen him again since this story. We just walked past each other in a busy street and exchanged a look. I wasn't wearing a flag then, so I only got a snigger this time. The police have told me to phone them if I see him, so I did that straight afterwards. They're checking the CCTV cameras for that too.

I'm glad to see they're taking this case surprisingly seriously.

-Lulie

Besides this bieng a total fairy tale,
I want to know why anyone would support a country that was made by stealing Palestenian land by killing and ejecting the rightfull owners?
What rights do arabs, muslims have in Israel? Forget about wearing a Palestinian flag in Tel Aviv. Israel tragets and attacks anyone around the world who even calls Palestine a country.

Your full of bullshit - everything on this site

Editors' note: Normally we would delete any comment from someone whose e-mail address purports to be killalljewsnow.com. Moreover, we might not always permit comments characterising this site as excrement and/or accusing us of lying. But we have decided to do so on this occasion and to reply. See our comment below.

"What rights do arabs, muslims have in Israel?"

For one, they have the right to be part of the government. For another, Arab legislators have the right to address the Knesset in Arabic, not Hebrew, and have it translated.

They have other rights as well. A better question might be: what rights *don't* they have?

-- Elliot Temple
curicuri.us
Dialogs

This is not a forum for the vulgar abuse of its owners, let alone for making antisemitic death threats ('a humanitarian's' purported e-mail address being killalljewsnow.com), and we make no promise that in future we shall permit comments characterising this site as excrement and/or accusing us of lying. We do so in this case for two reasons.

The first is that 'a humanitarian's' comment is an unusually concise illustration of how one is compelled to believe extreme factual falsehoods if one is to sustain an anti-Zionist moral position. Look how important it is to 'a humanitarian' that he speak out and declare to be a "total fairy tale" some events in Oxford that he has no knowledge of whatsoever. For he feels he does. Similarly, he feels obliged to bear witness to his completely baseless fantasy that Israel "targets and attacks anyone around the world who even calls Palestine a country" - and on the same day that Israel's Foreign Minister passionately called for the establishment of a Palestinian state living in peace side by side with Israel.

Our second reason is this: 'a humanitarian' presumably wants to think of himself as a humanitarian. In view of the deep and murderous hatred he expressed here, it is pointless to beg him to discover the facts before he expresses it again. But there is a lesser thing that we might urge him to do: find out what the opposing position (the one adopted by actual Israelis and Zionists, not the monsters in his head) is. And before even doing that he might do well to look here.

A symbol of hatred, illegal occupation and the forceful attempt to erradicate an entire race: This is what the Israeli flag has come to represent which why it is so offensive that you trivialise it. I always thought the strong use of colour and hindu symbology made the Swastika a striking flag but I would never be so disrespectful to those that suffered under the Nazi regime to suddenly start wearing it as a cape... Idiot.

a reader wrote

A symbol of hatred, illegal occupation and the forceful attempt to erradicate an entire race: This is what the Israeli flag has come to represent which why it is so offensive that you trivialise it.

The last two allegations (illegal occupation and racial eradication) are demonstrably false. As for the first one (hatred) I agree with the reader: In my experience, and I put it to you as an objective fact, the hatred is the one directed toward Israel by those in Arab and Muslem societies (including non-Arab Iran, etc.) whose ideal society is one in which tyranny, religious or otherwise, is the common order. They incite and use hatred against Israel, the US, and more broadly the entire Western civilization as a way to further and perpetuate this very ideal.

-- Cyrus Ferdowsi, http://libiran.blogspot.com

Brave move and I commend you! Appearances should not matter...Freedom of Speech should not mean you can be bullied or threatened. Anyone who thinks Freedom of Speech is something that can be used for aggression is exploiting the whole concept and is the reason why we are losing our freedoms...Having the right to say what you want does not excuse one to incite violence or fear through what is said!

Although I don't support Israel in all it does but I would never think of yelling at someone for wearing the flag or even be annoyed in the least. I would not even give the person a third look (anyone who has a flag around them gets a second look :P). It is refreshing to see that you weren't attacked by extremeist idiots (well not all that quickly). I don't really support either 'side' when it comes to Israel (both view points have compelling arguments). My only hope is that there is peace and soon.

I would like to share with you two brief conversations I have had recently.

I was told by one friend that this is the "tisk, tisk" society of people who care but who will do nothing. I asked her what it will take for people to stand up against the hate and she said, most likely it will happen after 17 bomb the Parliament Buildings and not get caught planning it.

I never think in terms of miracles, but last night I spoke with my son about every happy moment being precious and in it's own way, a miracle.

Thank you for you being a miracle...a sign of hope...a light unto the nations...

l'chaim

*clink*

rochelle

I am thinking of doing the same, i have worn my magen david chian over my shirt before but this is really nothing. I have an Israel flag on my wall and i may put it to the test. i think a shirt with the flag printed on would me more suitable. You dont see many people with flags around so it can be seen as provocative however you are still 100% right to do it and no one has any right to threaten you with violence for doing so. The fact that a man would threaten a 17 year old girl, shows how low these kind of people are, the reason a person with a hizbolah flag would not be attacked is because the attackers are those people.

Free Burma!
International Bloggers' Day for Burma on the 4th of October

International bloggers are preparing an action to support the peaceful revolution in Burma. We want to set a sign for freedom and show our sympathy for these people who are fighting their cruel regime without weapons. These Bloggers are planning to refrain from posting to their blogs on October 4 and just put up one Banner then, underlined with the words „Free Burma!“.

www.free-burma.org

I do not even know if you check the comments made on this page anymore, but even for the sake of the other visitors of your website, I have to state the reverence I have for your actions. Your test is very meaningful, reguardless if one supports Israel or not. Your test could have been any single one of a plethora of controversial political icons.

The most important thing, however,is that you have revealed an up-and-coming crisis for Western Society. Could the freedom's we so take for granted be in jeopardy? What you did took guts, and you put your neck on the line for what you believe in. The world needs more people like you.