A portrait of Lamine Yamal with the Palestinian flag in Gaza, this week. The torrents of contempt and hatred towards him are nothing but the flip side of the shame and embarrassment we seek to stave off from ourselves. Photo: AFP/OMAR AL-QATTAA

You read the reactions in Israel to Lamine Yamal’s waving of the Palestinian flag, and you’re filled with shame and embarrassment

Israel is wallowing in self-pity, and does not understand that the world is trying to tell it something: The flag at Barcelona’s championship celebrations is also the emblem of resistance to what we have become

By **Alon Idan • Translated by [Sol Salbe](https://www.facebook.com/sol.salbe)**

Lamine Yamal waved the Palestinian flag at Barcelona’s championship parade. The Palestinian flag is the emblem of the Palestinians who want a Palestinian state. There are millions of such Palestinians. They have been under Israeli Occupation for almost 60 years. In the West Bank, their entire communities are being driven further and further from their villages by the friends of Settlements Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Every week you can read about their maltreatment by the settlers, known by their euphemistic name “Hilltop Youth”. Israel, through its official forces (army, Judea & Samaria District Police) or unofficial ones (settlers), commits crimes against these human beings, and these people howl under the pain of these crimes. When Lamine Yamal waves the Palestinian flag, he waves a flag for these people. And yes, also against the criminals who make their lives miserable.

You read the reactions in Israel in response to the waving of this great player’s flag, and you’re filled with shame and embarrassment. You really feel how the collective consciousness has been rendered down into a steaming potage of stupidity and shallowness, and it in turn is hurled at Yamal’s own face. In sports news, Asaf Ackerman reported on the event and summed it up thus: “A great player, his brains remained on the bench.” Later, he posted: “In regard to Lamine Yamal with the Palestinian flag at Barcelona’s championship celebrations. What do we wish for him?”

Moshe Primo, a football commentator, took a moment from his duties at the neuroscience faculty and wrote: “Lamine Yamal is a truly great player, and a truly great fool.” Truly embarrassing. Yedioth Ahronoth immediately concocted a substantial article talking to Barcelona fans in Israel who were shocked by Yamal’s act. The comments ranged from the arrogance of fools (“He doesn’t know what Palestine is and he’s a fool”) to the kitschy demand for “stateliness” (“When you’re a wonder of the world, you’re supposed to act with the Stateliness and courtesy of a wonder of the world”).

Towering above everyone, but actually being very much below, is of course the grotesque figure known as the “Minister of Security” (as the Minister of Defence is known in Hebrew), AKA Herod (Israel Katz), who declared that “Lamine Yamal chose to incite against Israel and encourage hatred while our soldiers are fighting the Hamas terrorist organisation.” He even formally contacted the Barcelona club management demanding that it renounce the act “in a clear and unequivocal manner,” because he (Katz) “will not respect or remain silent in the face of incitement against Israel and against Jews.”

A country in denial. A self-suppressing country. A country that is wallowing deeper and deeper into self-pity. A country that looks at a Palestinian flag and is certain that the others want to destroy it. A country that is unable to look at itself, within itself, and understand that the world is trying to tell it something: Yes, October 7 was a barbaric massacre by barbaric people. Yes, Israelis were murdered, burnt, and kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in an unforgivable way. But the Palestinian flag is not a symbol of support for the massacre; and the Palestinian flag does not stand for justification for October 7; and the Palestinian flag is not the flag of Hamas. The Palestinian flag symbolises the yearning of millions of people Who are being crushed under Israel for a state of their own. For independence. For freedom. For sovereignty. For what we, the Israelis, have.

Yesterday, in Jerusalem, in what is called the March of the Flags but is nothing more than the brutish annual Israeli parade, one could witness the Israeli transformation: What used to be celebrated as Jerusalem Day turned into a day of pogroms against the Palestinians, and their market stalls etc, with a variety of chants being sung. Chants like “May your village burn” and “Death to the Arabs” (shout-out to La Familia [racist supporters of the Jerusalem Beitar team]), and violence that was also directed against Jewish Israelis who came to defend the Palestinians and journalists who came to cover the event. This is the present-day face of Israel, and when Lamine Yamal waves the flag of Palestine, he is also waving the flag of resistance to this ugly depiction that is becoming our depiction.

Regarding the well-known hackneyed demand to separate sports from politics: Well, it is interesting that it is always brought up when it serves those who are uncomfortable with this combination. And if Lamine Yamal were to wave the Israeli flag — as in the stupidly patriotic photomontage made by footballer Maor Levi — then all Israelis would surely welcome the mixing, led by the Minister of Insecurity, Israel Katz. But when it is uncomfortable to look in the mirror, they demand that it be removed from the room.

Yes, Yamal is young and innocent. That is why he took an action that people who aspire to be billionaires, who live within the cozy bosom of consensus, do not dare to do. But his youth and innocence stand to his credit in this case in the sense that he took a real action, wholeheartedly, without consideration to the impact on his bank balance. The contempt and hatred towards him are nothing but the flipside of the shame and embarrassment that we seek to stave off from ourselves.

Translated from Hebrew by **Sol Salbe, [Middle East News Service](https://www.facebook.com/sol.salbe)**

Haaretz Hebrew original:

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