A federal court has ruled that burning, tearing, or grabbing the Israeli flag is not political expression but racial discrimination.

A federal court has issued a ruling that redefines the boundaries of free speech in the United States. Judge Trevor N. McFadden ruled that ‘desecrating’ the Israeli flag is not political expression but racial discrimination.

The decision means burning, tearing, or grabbing the Israeli flag can be prosecuted as hate conduct. By contrast, the US Supreme Court has long protected the burning of the American flag under the First Amendment.

    • AlHouthi4President@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      1 month ago

      From Palestinian academic Afif Aqrabawi just the other day.

      "The Star of David is no longer a religious emblem; it is the geometry of pain, the symbol of massacre and the face of evil.

      Palestinians meet it on warplanes, checkpoints, tanks, and uniforms that invade their homes and drag away their children. For decades it has meant occupation, humiliation, starvation, death — the corporate logo of apartheid.

      Every incinerated body, every bombed hospital, every mass grave is signed with that star. It is policy, a brand of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

      The Star of David is a hate symbol that performs the work of hate: it terrifies, injures, dehumanizes, and proclaims our suffering as divine order. It is not neutral. It is not redeemable. It has been weaponized too completely, for too long. What remains is only the insignia of a terrorist organization that slaughters children under its banner — the flag planted in Gaza’s ruins, the badge of a system built on our extermination.

      The Star of David is the mark of my oppressor; to claim it is to be a child-killer and my enemy."

    • Majestic@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 month ago

      Can’t have a struggle if the mods just ban dissenters who make good points and call them out. Real yikes stuff going on in your thread over there defending this kind of logic.