Introduction

In January 2023, Israel’s newly appointed government launched a wide-scale judicial overhaul. Aimed at diminishing the power of the judiciary branch relative to that of the executive branch, the initiative prompted an unprecedented wave of protests across Israel, identified mainly with center-left, pro-democracy, and liberal political forces. The protests continued until Hamas’ October 7, 2023 surprise attack on southern Israel, which led to a war, and resumed several months after this attack, although they now focused on other issues, with the judicial overhaul being a secondary concern.

A notable feature of the protests against the judicial overhaul, which soon became evident, was the prominence of the Israeli flag as one of their central symbols.Footnote 1 Among the many symbols used to convey meaning, flags are especially powerful in eliciting emotional reactions (Posner, 1998). Notably, national flags tend to be displayed more prominently and with greater fervor during periods of crisis (Collins, 2014; Jarman, 2007; Skitka, 2005). For the first time in many years, Israelis who identify as members of the “liberal-democratic camp” felt proud to wave the Israeli flag (in a context other than Independence Day celebrations). Until then, the flag had been mainly associated with Israel’s political right and with West Bank settlers, who use it to demonstrate their patriotism and commitment to the Jewish character of the State of Israel—properties that the left was implied to lack. A stark example of the right’s appropriation of the flag (and one of the likely reasons for the discomfort with it previously felt by many Israelis) is the annual Flag March, held by ultranationalist Orthodox Jews on the anniversary of Israel’s 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem. This event, which involves marching with flags through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, has become a major source of Jewish-Arab tension. In many countries, too, the left is generally less inclined than the right to embrace national flags (Trofimchuk and Goh, 2024). Notably, Christian nationalists have appropriated the Israeli flag for their purposes (Barreto and Kim, 2023; Cho and Lee, 2021), much like Protestant Unionists in Northern Ireland (Hamber, 2006; Hill and White, 2008). By reclaiming the flag, the members of the pro-democracy camp divorced it from this nationalist framework, and conveyed that they too were “true patriots”.Footnote 2 Another reason for reclaiming the flag was that the judicial overhaul is seen as an attack on “Israeliness” (as an identity and ideology) and on the values set out in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.Footnote 3

Let us note that Israel’s national flag was officially adopted on 28 October 1948, five months after the establishment of the state. Featuring a blue hexagram on a white background between two horizontal blue stripes, its basic design is meant to recall the tallit (Jewish prayer shawl), which is white with black or blue stripes. The symbol at the center is the Star of David (Magen David), a Jewish symbol that originated in Prague in the late medieval period and was adopted by the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

Following Bellah (2005), we can identify the symbolic language and practices fostered by the protesters as a new “civil religion”, in the sense that they protected and promoted values they believed to be essential to the endurance of the nation. In other words, the protesters created a space of legitimation where they became the defenders of Israel’s liberal values.

With the outbreak of the protests and as a reaction to the developments in the political arena, the Israeli flag began to undergo modifications that superposed various messages on its original basic symbolic value. As the demonstrations gained recognition and were joined by an increasing number of civil communities and social movements, the flag underwent further transformations, not only as a response to the evolving reality but also reflecting the diverse nature of Israeli society, thus defining political identities (Aneckstein, 1972) and becoming an index of ideological unity or disparity (Kolstø, 2006). Aneckstein (1972) argues that symbols, operating within a framework of values and participating in the process of socialization, serve as conceptual instruments for interpreting political experience, making and communicating meaning, and defining individual and communal political identity. Their power lies in their ability to both trigger rationality and appeal to one’s emotions, memory, and imagination.

The Israeli flag had, of course, been previously subject to various interpretations in artFootnote 4 and social activism.Footnote 5 In this study, we seek to explore the narratives and the symbolic messages conveyed by these mutations of the flag from the perspective of semiotic landscape theory (Jaworski and Thurlow, 2010), which deals with the dichotomous, dialectical nature of landscapes as both physical environments and symbolic systems of semiotic codes. Our research also borrows from different approaches to multimodal discourse analysis, according to which meaning arises not only from different semiotic resources but also from inter-semiotic mechanisms allowing the expansion of meaning.

The flag’s various transformations—be it by decomposition of its original symbolism or by fusion with other symbolic contents associated with specific advocacy groups—recontextualize the flag and thereby challenge Billig’s (1995) thesis regarding the banal nationalism associated with state symbols. According to Billig, there is a difference between established nations, confident in their own continuity, which take their flag for granted, and unestablished, insecure nations that wave their flag consciously and “with fervent passion” (p. 8) to promote national unity. In our specific case, the flag in its original form, and in various other versions, seeks to express the competing—and sometimes incompatible—ideologies and worldviews that form the complex mosaic of Israeli society, while re-raising the question of whether these competing ideologies should continue to exist “under the same roof (flag)” or part ways.

The photo below (Fig. 1)—taken during one of the protests in front of Israel’s parliament building (the Knesset) between January and September 2023—is an enlightening example that neatly juxtaposes a banal instance of Israel’s national flag and a de-banalization of the same state symbol. Flying high on the Knesset roof is Israel’s national flag. This banner is a permanent feature of the Knesset building, alongside other state emblems, and can thus be regarded as a mundane symbol, almost too familiar to be noticed under normal circumstances. In the foreground are the protesters, waving “the same” flag. The signifier is one and the same, but, in the context of the crisis, their flags are coupled with a different signified. The protesters’ flags “correspond with” the banalyzed national symbol by recontextualizing it and giving it a new definition.

Fig. 1
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Banal nationalism alongside a de-banalization of state symbols.

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This photo shows banal nationalism and its de-banalization within the same semiotic landscape, but let us note that this is not the kind of example we will be focusing on in the present study. The study is concerned with cases in which the flag, as a national symbol, was manipulated and changed in order to signify and mediate ideologies, deliver responses in the context of the crisis, and establish a vibrant discourse on national identity. To use the terms of Jaworski and Thurlow’s (2010) thesis, this deliberate—imaginative and creative—intervention on the part of the protesters, involving visible signage,Footnote 6 culminates in the creation of a new semiotic landscape and sets out the terms for a debate on national identity.

Semiotic landscape and de-banalized nationalism

Following Cosgrove (1984), who defines “landscape” as a “way of seeing the external world” (p. 46) and as “a visual ideology” (p. 47), and building on Lefebvre’s (1974) dimensions of conceived, perceived and lived spaces,Footnote 7 Jaworski and Thurlow’s (2010) concept of landscape involves the interpretation of space in ways that are “contingent on geographical, social, economic, legal, cultural and emotional circumstances” (p. 3), as well as “practical uses of the physical environment as nature and territory, esthetic judgements, memory and myth” (p. 3). This broad perspective on landscape incorporates religious beliefs, historical discourses, and politics of gender, class, ethnicity, etc. (see also Osborne, 2000). Landscape is thus seen as dynamic. First, it is reconstructed by constantly changing social and cultural practices; second, it is actualized in both physical and symbolic features, providing a context for human action and socio-political activity. It thus corresponds with Simonsen’s (2007) approach to human, social, and cultural geography, which is likewise based on practice. Addressing apparently banal, insignificant activities of everyday life (see also Lefebvre, 1958, 1961 on manifestations of banality), as well as the formation of embodied or practical knowledge in people’s everyday lives, including emotions and imagination, this approach is rooted in the recognition that social life and people’s understanding of their surroundings are built on human practices. In other words, subjectivity and meaning depend on practice (professional experience, cultural experience, sensuous practices, habit-based conduct, etc.). People’s “environment” is therefore not a given, but a complex reality shaped and produced through action and practice. Practice also generates emotion, in that people cannot remain untouched by the surrounding world. Emotions are thus connected to other components of subjectivity, such as perception, gestures, actions, language, and interpretation. Frisby (1997) also argues that identities are created through geographical imagining and self-location in space, by claiming ownership of places, sharing spaces with others or, alternatively, feeling excluded from spaces. For other scholars (see Sörlin, 1999), symbolic and mental landscapes also arise by semioticizing processes of material landscape features (natural, architectural, rural, and urban landscapes) and reproducing or recreating them in artistic media (literary texts, visual arts, etc.).

In the case under discussion—that of the Israeli flag and its transformations in the context of the political crisis—protesters utilized a symbol already associated with existing myths, values, and historical-cultural-ideological discourses. But through the social practice of modifying this conventional symbol, these social actors sought to transform their lived space and give new meaning to the landscape. In Pain’s (2017) terms, one could also claim that in modifying the flag, protesters sought to mobilize emotions for action and social change (see also Rose, 2004 on emotional geographies). Let us not forget that the flag became a very prominent icon during this period. The flag was everywhere, both in its original form (as can be seen in Fig. 1) and in many modified versions, not only as an object carried by protesters during demonstrations and hung from windows and balconies, but also as a symbol displayed on billboards, banners, pictures and T-shirts, scrawled as graffiti, projected on buildings and so on. Thus, urban and rural areas were resemioticized, positioning and repositioning social actors in an evolving context and redefining the flag’s indexicality. The flag became a symbol not only of the State of Israel, but also of an envisioned Israel: the state as it should be redefined and reconceived in the aftermath of the crisis, according to the worldviews and agendas of different groups. In other words, with this emblematic symbol, the protests shaped the idea of a desired geopolitical scripting and an envisioned geopolitical identity (Anderson, 1991; Morehouse, 2002, p. 84; Warf, 2002).

Smith (1999) notes that national symbols play a unifying role not only in established nation-states but also in new multicultural ones and in fragile contexts. In our case, we might claim that the liberal-secular camps embraced the national flag to assert that this flag represents them too. The flag itself remained constant in its appearance, but the values it represented, and the interpretations and emotions attributed to it, were transformed.

Objective and methodology

This study maps the shifts that the Israeli flag underwent as it was used to mediate various ideologies and also respond to the unfolding events of the crisis. This mapping will allow us to trace the discourses and the symbolic messages conveyed by the various versions of the flag. As stated in the previous section, our analysis places emphasis on the semiotic landscape and its interaction with these different permutations of the flag. In order to decode their semiotic values—visible in many authentic scenes captured during street protests by professional photographers and others, as well as in artistic adaptations of the flag disseminated in various forms and media—we draw on approaches to multimodal discourse analysis (Kress, 2010; Van Leeuwen and Jewitt, 2001; O’Halloran, 2008; Serafini and Reid, 2019). These established frameworks provide essential theoretical grounding for our investigation; however, our analytical approach, informed by the broader theoretical foundations of multimodal discourse analysis, develops and applies our own conceptual framework tailored to the specific phenomena under investigation. Our analysis thus contributes to expanding the interpretive range of multimodal critical discourse analysis by demonstrating how multimodal texts can be understood in relation to broader political and cultural struggles.

According to Jewitt (2009), multimodality enables to decode semiotic resources and contexts associated with various modes of representation and communication. She writes that modes or modalities are “semiotic resources for making meaning that are employed in a culture—such as image, writing, gesture, gaze, speech, posture” (p. 1). According to Kress (2010), a mode or modality may be characterized as a set of socially- and culturally-shaped resources with distinct opportunities for making meaning. Multimodality theories are based on the premise that the process of meaning-making usually “fuses” (van Leeuwen 2005, p. 79) a variety of modalities: image with writing, speech with gesture, different kinds of conventional symbols with dialog, visuals, etc. Thus, the semiotic unit is a site where various modes coalesce to form a single communicative action of a higher level, resulting from its modal density. The term “communicative space”, suggested by Scollon (2005), thus describes all the essential spaces necessary for a site of engagement, within which a message is mediated. In addition to these assumptions, Goodwin (2000) stresses the importance of context, asserting that modes develop in response to the needs of communities: “By itself each set of semiotic resources is partial and incomplete. However, when joined together in local contextures of action, diverse semiotic resources mutually elaborate each other to create a whole that is both greater than and different from any of its constituent parts” (p. 2). In the present case study, it is thus essential to remember that the flag’s various mutations correspond not only with the flag in its original form, but also with the evolving political situation, with the religious-historical-cultural baggage, with different agents representing various ideologies, and with the landscape.

The case study

Our corpus encompasses authentic spontaneous visual artifacts documented during the protests by both amateur and professional photographers, alongside artistic representations disseminated in diverse formats (including comics, stickers, and editorial cartoons). As participant observers in the protests, we incorporated our own photographic documentation as well as images circulated within our social networks and messaging platforms. From an extensive initial corpus, we employed purposive sampling aligned with our research objectives. Following the application of exclusion criteria to eliminate irrelevant data, we analyzed dozens of instances exhibiting various transformations of the Israeli flag—the primary focus of this manuscript. All images were utilized with explicit permission from their respective creators.

In the subsequent analysis, we present selected representative cases chosen to illustrate both genre diversity and the spectrum of flag transformations. Our analytical framework identifies two predominant categories: (a) transformations involving the deconstruction or disassembly and/or reconfiguration (reassembly) of the flag’s constituent elements (occasionally including the omission of one or more components); and (b) hybridization or fusion of the national flag with other emblematic symbols or flags to establish coherence between previously discrete value systems.

Disassembly and reassembly

A salient feature of all of the examples presented here is an expression of grief and concern about the current political situation. For example, Ilana Zeffren, an Israeli comics artist, expresses anxiety about the political agendas pushed by the current government and their impact on liberal values and on the robustness of Israeli democracy. Ilana Zeffren is known for her activism—or artivism—focusing on issues of the LGBTQ community, of which she is a member, as well as on leftist-liberal political protest, minority rights, and animal advocacy. In the work reproduced in Fig. 2 (one of her weekly cartoon panels in the daily Haaretz), she replaces the central component of the Israeli flag—the Star of David—with a question mark, thus iconically referencing the unstable political reality and expressing her concern about it, and also raising awareness of the need to take action. By depicting her own hand drawing the question mark and thus explicitly including herself in the graphic scene, she embodies her commitment as a concerned citizen. The cat—a constant protagonist in her work—supports her struggle by saying “I’m crossing my paws” (i.e., crossing my fingers).

Fig. 2
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Ilana Zeffren’s question-mark flag.

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The work in Fig. 3, another of Zeffren’s weekly cartoons, responds to the rift and division in Israeli society and may be seen as an expression of concern for a beloved country that seems to be standing on the brink of an abyss. Here, the Star of David is replaced by hugging arms, still forming two triangles and thus associatively preserving the original symbol and corresponding with it. The arms express her wish to preserve the character of the country as liberal Israelis perceive it: a tolerant place that embraces everybody, including minorities.

Fig. 3
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Ilana Zeffren’s flag with embracing arms forming the Star of David.

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In Figs. 4–9, we see different examples of disassembly, which iconically or metaphorically reference different ways in which well-established or even sacred values have been shattered and society has been fragmented and torn apart by the uncompromising policies of the new far-right government. We may also interpret these disassemblies as a warning or a call for resistance. In Fig. 4, the triangles forming the Star of David have fallen apart, representing a state of total collapse and breakdown. Figure 5, which appeared on the front page of the Haaretz daily’s weekend supplement on January 20, 2023, evokes a setting sun and conveys the sinking or downfall of every liberal-democratic value that defines the Israeli state. Figures 6–9 are accompanied by verbal messages. In Fig. 6, the Star of David has been reconfigured to resemble the “back” symbol on video or audio players, and the text reads “We will not let you set us back”. In Fig. 7, the verbal message is “preserving the separation of powers”, and the two triangles are merged into one, to convey the potential danger of the Knesset overriding judicial decisions. In Fig. 8, the text says “acting before the ship sinks”, and the two triangles form the shape of a sailing boat, and in Fig. 9, the Star of David is careening out of control, and the verbal message says “without brakes the country is doomed”.

Fig. 4
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Fig. 5
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Fig. 6
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Fig. 7
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Fig. 8
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Fig. 9
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Iconic messages conveyed through disassembly.

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Images involving reassembly, on the other hand, might be read as suggesting a different, better, or even transformed future (for example, one in which injustice towards minorities is redressed), or as a wake-up call or reminder of the need for unity and tolerance. They can also be seen as a lament for lost values (especially by Israelis who feel that certain values can no longer coexist, for instance in the context of the “inequality in sharing the burden”, i.e., the disparity in Israel between the ultraorthodox sector and other sectors in military and economic contribution). In Fig. 10, the Star of David is replaced with a heart, reminding the addressee of the importance of empathy, openness, solidarity, and so forth. This example can be seen as a case of reassembly (the incorporation of the heart instead of the original emblem), and also of fusion (see Section 4.2), since the color is identified with the Pink Front, an activist movement that coalesced during the Balfour protests in JerusalemFootnote 8 and promotes values of liberty, democracy, and equality. The color pink represents optimism and hope, and non-violent yet determined protest. As they state it in their manifesto:

Fig. 10
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The pink heart flag.

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“Why pink? Pink cannot be a symbol for fascism and evil” […] pink is a color that reflects sensitivity, softness, compassion, childhood, love, hope and optimism—the future that each and every one in Israel and all around the world deserves” (https://pinkfront.co.il/wp-content/uploads/english/PinkFrontEnglish_5.pdf).

The fact that instances of reassembly are less common than instances of disassembly is not surprising, given that in the time period under discussion, the protest was at its peak and the protesters were mainly preoccupied with resistance, trying to block policies that would undermine Israel’s democracy and irrevocably change its character.

Fusing different components

This section presents a selection of cases in which the Israeli flag as a whole, or its main component, the Star of David, is merged with other flags representing specific identity groups or promoting specific political or ideological agendas.

Figure 11 is an example of fusion between the rainbow flag, representing the LGBTQ community, and the Star of David.Footnote 9 A June 5, 2023, article in Haaretz noted that the pride flag had become the second commonest flag seen in the Israeli protests against the judicial overhaul. Recall that, under a government with a large number of members from the religious parties, some of whom have expressed homophobic sentiments in the past, the gay community faces the threat of new laws and regulations that could diminish its status and undermine its security. The fusion of the two flags conveys a demand to maintain the liberal status quo and uphold the values of equality and inclusion in the face of the emerging new climate.Footnote 10

Fig. 11
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Fusion of the rainbow flag and the Israeli flag.

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The work in Fig. 12, again by Zeffren, does not physically merge the rainbow flag and the Israeli flag into a single object, but rather juxtaposes them, thus granting them equal status within the boundaries of the graphic scene. Zeffren also refers to two other minority groups that are threatened in the climate of the judicial overhaul: the Palestinians, represented by the mouse embodying the Palestinian flag, and women, represented by the red mouse with the white bonnet. The latter evokes the characters in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and the eponymous TV series, and refers to the Israeli women’s rights advocacy group Bonot Alternativa (“building an alternative”), which staged Handmaid’s Tale protest installations as part of the demonstrations against the judicial overhaul.

Fig. 12
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Zeffren’s integrative non-merged flag(s).

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Figure 13 is a case of fusion between the Israeli flag and the flag of the Black Flag protest movement. Formed in March 2020, this movement staged the “Balfour protests” against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2020–2021, calling for his resignation over a series of corruption charges for which he is standing trial. The movement later took a leading role in the mass demonstrations—including the main demonstrations held every week on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street (sponsored by the “Kaplan Force”)—against the far-right government’s proposed judicial coup which, the movement felt, posed an imminent threat to Israel’s democratic balance of power. The fusion here establishes a link and continuity between the Black Flag protests of 2020–2021, which focused on the prime minister’s corruption charges, and the subsequent protests against Netanyahu and his government, which came out against the judicial overhaul and the government’s policies as a whole. It thus hints at the direct link that may exist between the events—i.e., the possible connection between Netanyahu’s corruption charges and his attempt to postpone or cancel his trial, on the one hand, and the judicial overhaul on the other—and may serve as a call for resistance.

Fig. 13
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The banner of the Black Flag movement merged with the Israeli flag.

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The Pink Front (Fig. 14) also joined the anti-Netanyahu demonstrations in 2021. Many of its original members were artists who chose the color pink for its association with optimism, female leadership, and love, among other connotations. Its banner faithfully preserves the official national flag, but in a “pinkwashed” form.

Fig. 14
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The Pink Front’s version of the Israeli flag.

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Figures 15 and 16 are two examples of fusion combining the Israeli flag with the Palestinian one. In Fig. 15, both flags retain their original form, but their juxtaposition within a single product conveys the need for coexistence or at least for recognition of the Palestinians. Figure 16, on the other hand, actually melds the two flags, using the form of the Israeli flag (a Star of David between two stripes) and the colors of the Palestinian one (black, white, red, and green).

Fig. 15
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Merging the Israeli flag with the Palestinian flag.

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Fig. 16
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Merging the Israeli flag with the Palestinian flag.

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Finally, in Fig. 17, we see a clear allusion to Meir Kahane’s ideology, promoted by the Kach (“Thus”) political party. This radical Orthodox and ultra-nationalist Jewish political party was founded in 1971 and existed until 1994, when it was banned by the Israeli cabinet under the 1948 anti-terrorism laws. The party’s racist agenda advocated the expulsion (“transfer”) of most Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian territories. Beyond promoting the idea of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the party incited racism and rejected the democratic character of the State of Israel. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party, which joined the Likud coalition on November 25, 2022 following the legislative election that year, is considered an ideological offshoot of the Kach party.

Fig. 17
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The Israeli flag with a palimpsestic allusion to the Kach party.

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The flag in Fig. 17, used by protesters in favor of the judicial overhaul, has the Hebrew word “transfer” written across it and yellow stripes added at the top and bottom, in a clear allusion to the Kach party and its ideology. Yellow was the color of the Kach flag, which featured a raised fist inside a black Star of David against a yellow background. Since the party was outlawed, its followers, colloquially known as “Kahanists”, refrain from displaying the flag in public, but they allude to it by decomposing its original components, as exemplified in the case before us.

This example shows that during the protests, the flag became a tool, or a weapon, for all of the forces involved. Each side championed its own vision of Israel, according to its own set of values and the agenda(s) and identity it sought to promote. The flag or its central component, the Star of David, might remain the same as a signifier, but the signified varies, depending on the party waving or manipulating the flag.

The act of reinterpreting the flag emerged as a complex symbolic practice, reflecting entrenched societal tensions. These transformative processes revealed a significant negotiation of values and agendas, characterized by attempts to integrate divergent ideological elements into alternative value frameworks.

Discussion and conclusions

This study has demonstrated that the national flag, in its original form and in various other permutations, served as a central symbol in the 2023 protests against the judicial overhaul in Israel. It was used to mobilize and energize the protesters and convey that the protests are a comprehensive, nationwide struggle by all those who feel anxious about the changing political atmosphere and the danger to core principles of the state. In this paper, we concentrated on two kinds of creative manipulations—disassembly/reassembly and fusion—that were performed on the flag to represent and mediate different agendas and social movements. Generally speaking, creativity was a way to maintain the protest’s momentum and impact, especially since it was (and continues to be) a long-term protest. A morphological transformation of a familiar symbol not only captures attention and intrigues the observer but also raises awareness and triggers discussion. We did not focus on the banalization of national symbols (Billig, 1995) but rather on the conscious de-banalization, in different ways, of a symbol that until then had been taken for granted by many groups. In Jaworski and Thurlow’s terms (2010), we showed that, through the creative manipulation of banal national symbols, the protesters produced a new semiotic landscape, thus setting the terms for activism in a context of political turmoil. From the outbreak of the protests, the impression was that the flag was everywhere. Israel “wore” its flag, and not only during the demonstrations or on the familiar national days, but also on billboards, buildings, shirts, bags, and so on. After October 7, the flag remained ubiquitous but assumed a different semiotic value.

A symbol (in our case, the flag at its original form) is, by definition, conventionalized, banalized, mythicized, and usually unquestioned by the group it represents or advocates for. The creative attempts to modify the flag by disassembling and reassembling it or by fusion, as presented and analyzed here, may be seen as an attempt to render the symbol more communicative, more ambiguous, and more effective as a means of raising awareness and keeping agendas alive. This was done by pointing out (indexing) a certain reality or a certain emotivity (fear, concern, anxiety, anger, hope for a better future), or by reflecting (mirroring) a suggested alternative in a more transparent manner (iconicity) by staging the message and concretizing the ideology being put forward.

Let us recall that Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence proclaims that “the State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the ‘Ingathering of the Exiles’“.Footnote 11 This objective remains a top priority of the Israeli state. For example, during the final decade of the 20th century, nearly a million immigrants arrived in Israel from numerous countries (see also Desille, 2020). Jewish Israeli society is therefore highly diverse in the geographical origin of its members. A major ethnocultural divide is between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, who are further divided into many smaller origin groups. An additional aspect of diversity, among many others, is affinity to Judaism, with Israelis identifying variously as secular, traditional or religious, and traditional/religious Jews divided further among different movements and communities (Orthodox, including the ultratraditionalist and Modern Orthodox branches; Reform; Conservative, Reconstructionst and Jewish Renewal, among others).

In the context of the crisis, one of the reasons for the prominence of the national flag over other symbols may be the need felt by each of the groups to proclaim that it is part of the national fabric while also demanding recognition and rightful representation among this multitude of identitarian groups. Although the flag is rooted in religious symbolism, it is seen as a national emblem that transcends this religious content and becomes a mythic symbol.

The use of symbols in times of crisis as a means of social mobilization and to trigger collective memory is neither a new nor a unique phenomenon. Recall for example the peace sign, originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement in 1958 but later adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists all over the world; the Guy Fawkes mask (also known as the “V for Vendetta” mask and, since 2008, as the “Anonymous” mask), and the effigy of a banker used in the London G20 Protest (Liao, 2010). In our specific case, the fact that mutually-antagonistic parties, sometimes even unreconcilable ones, all adopted the national flag as their symbol may be explained as an act of claiming and defining Israeliness, i.e., what Israel represents for each of them and what it should remain or become according to each one of them, etc. Thus, unlike in the three examples mentioned above, there was just one signifier—the flag—but with different signified values.

Flag manipulation functioned as a metaphorical space for negotiating competing social agendas. Each alteration of its symbolism sought to reframe conflicting perspectives within the broader societal context. Thus, the flag’s transformation was not merely physical, but a performative act of social meaning-making, wherein symbolic representations were strategically deconstructed and reconstructed to convey the complex political and cultural tensions within Israeli society.