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The Israeli flag just became the only national flag illegal to burn in the United States

When Criticizing Israel Becomes a Hate Crime: How One Ruling Betrayed the First Amendment

By Shaun King | The North Star | August 16, 2025

The Flag America Protects

This week in Washington, D.C., a federal judge made a ruling so shocking, so unprecedented, that it flips the First Amendment on its head. Judge Trevor N. McFadden declared that the Israeli flag — with the Star of David at its center — is not a political symbol at all, but a racial one.

He ruled that tearing it, grabbing it, desecrating it, even in the heat of protest, is not free expression but racial discrimination.

Think about that. In the United States, you can burn the American flag — the Supreme Court has said so for decades. But now, according to this ruling, burning or tearing the Israeli flag could make you guilty of racial hatred. The one national flag protected in American law today isn’t our own. It’s Israel’s.

You can burn the flags of all 50 states. You can torch the American flag all you want. You can burn the flags of the UK or France or Brazil or China.

But not Israel.

The Supreme Court’s Bedrock Principle

The highest court in the land has spoken clearly: you cannot criminalize burning the American flag. In Texas v. Johnson(1989), Justice William Brennan wrote:

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

The following year, in United States v. Eichman (1990), the Court struck down another attempt to ban flag burning, reminding the country that:

“Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.”

In America, even the Stars and Stripes — the nation’s own sacred symbol — cannot be placed above criticism or protest. That is what freedom means. And yet in 2025, a federal judge just carved out an exception — for a foreign flag.

How the Israeli Flag Was Elevated

The case came from dueling protests in D.C. last fall. Kimmara Sumrall, a pro-Israel activist, draped the Israeli flag around her shoulders as a cape. A pro-Palestinian demonstrator yanked it. A police officer saw it and arrested the woman.

The criminal court acquitted her. But Sumrall filed a civil rights lawsuit, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, arguing that this wasn’t just an assault — it was racial discrimination.

Judge McFadden agreed. In his ruling, he wrote:

“Purposefully yanking on an Israeli flag tied around a Jewish person’s neck… is direct evidence of racial discrimination. The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish race.”

With that, he collapsed the line between a political symbol and a people’s identity. He went so far as to compare attacking the Israeli flag to using the N-word against a Black person.

No other flag in the world has been granted this kind of protection in an American courtroom. Not Britain’s. Not Canada’s. Not Mexico’s. Not even our own. Only Israel’s.

Civil Rights Law Twisted

To reach this conclusion, McFadden invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1866, written to protect newly freed Black Americans. Later, in 1987, the Supreme Court held that Jews and Arabs were covered as “races” under this law.

But McFadden went further than any court before him. He declared that the flag of Israel itself is a racial symbol — and therefore protected. And in doing so, he turned what was supposed to be a shield for the oppressed into a shield for an oppressive foreign government.

The Global Contrast

Everywhere else in the democratic world, flag burning is understood as a political expression. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled again and again: desecrating a flag, however offensive, is free speech.

It is only authoritarian regimes that conflate their flags with their people, criminalizing dissent in the name of “unity.” Now, America has imported that same authoritarian logic — not to protect our own flag, but to protect Israel’s. It’s wild to see.

The Stakes for Protest

The implications are chilling. If this ruling stands, tearing down or burning an Israeli flag at a protest could be treated as a federal hate crime. Shouting against Zionism near someone draped in the flag could be called racial harassment.

This isn’t about protecting Jewish people from violence. It’s about shielding Israel from protest while it bombs and starves children in Gaza.

One Flag Above All

Let’s be brutally clear. The Israeli flag is now the only national flag that American courts have declared effectively immune from desecration. The Stars and Stripes itself can be burned in the name of protest. Israel’s flag cannot.

That is not constitutional law. That is political favoritism dressed up as civil rights. And it represents a betrayal of the First Amendment.

Shaun King is an American writer & activist.

August 19, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Human rights, Israel, United States