Apparently it had been bought for my world flag collection before the al-Aqsa flood, and ever since then it’s just been kinda sitting there all folded up at the back of the gifts-to-give shelf for over a year, because giving the Zionist flag to me on any occasion would be incredibly tone-deaf, and has only continued to become progressively more tone-deaf as… *gestures broadly at everything*
So finally it was decided to just give the flag to me today because “that’s where the Christmas story happened” — and I said to this justification, “Bethlehem is in the West Bank, you have to go through like eight checkpoints to get there from Nazareth nowadays.”
…But in any case the deed is done: I am now in possession of the flag of a settler-colonial vassal of empire currently committing an active, brutal genocide, to realize its expansionist ambitions under its racist ideology of ethnic supremacy. In other words, I have basically been given the equivalent of the Hakenkreuzflagge for Christmas of 1944.
After reviewing my options for things I can do with this gift, I have decided that I want to try redyeing the flag into either the Palestinian flag or the flag of the PFLP. I haven’t dyed any fabric in nearly a decade so it’ll be a good opportunity to practice that sort of crafts skill, I think.
I mean that might be true with people, but Israel is never going to learn of this situation and there is a sort of poetic irony in tur ining the zionist flag into the flag of their victims. For anyone who believes in that sort of thing you could maybe even consider it some sort of manifestation ritual lol. I think it adds a sort of symbolism for OP to have a homemade Palestinian flag, and if and when someone asks about it they can say “well actually let me tell you about the history of that flag” and then hopefully they migjt even be able to talk about how it mirrors the history of the region. The flag was colonizing space in their collection but was righteously reclaimed.