Why does the right always have to change the flag?

Is this even a US flag?

I was driving to work yesterday and saw this flag on the back of the car ahead of me. Being a librarian, I remembered the colors and looked them up when I got to the library. After doing research, this configuration shows your support for the military (green line), fire fighters (red line), and, of course, police (blue line).

What was initially just a curiosity—I'm a librarian, after all, and this piqued my interest—turned into something more after reading this article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israelis who have turned out in their hundreds of thousands since prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government assumed power two months to protest its avowed intent to eviscerate the Israeli judiciary have adopted the Israeli flag as their symbol. And, most notably, they made this decision:

“I’m part of lots of WhatsApp groups active in the protests,” says [Darya Henig-Shaked]. “In one of these groups, people were wondering whether we shouldn’t add a colorful stripe to the flag that identifies us with a particular cause. The consensus was that we should not. This consensus was that this is about safeguarding our democracy and the values reflected in our Declaration of Independence, and therefore the Israeli flag, without any embellishments, is the right flag to be holding.”

The Israeli protestors were not going to change the flag. They wanted to reclaim it, to rip it from the hands of the extreme right which, as in the US, has appropriated the symbol. This act of reclamation has been so successful that one of the protestors was called a "leftist piece of garbage" by a random (male) stranger on the street, because she was carrying the Star of David flag on her way to a march.

Certainly since 9/11, the right in the US has claimed sole possession of the flag and its meaning of patriotism. But look at what they do to it. They change it. They turn most of the flag to start black and white, with a colored line to indicate their pet peccadilloes. Having the flag isn't enough; they know that at heart this is the flag which was flown as American troops drove into Nazi Germany, as the Marines climbed Mount Suribachi, defeating the fascists with whom the right is now infatuated. For all its flaws, the American flag stands for freedom and liberty, however imperfectly formed those concepts are. That's not what people who fly flags like the above believe in. In their view, a thin elite are the only people standing between the country and total collapse. They have no idea of a commonwealth, no idea of joint effort of all citizens to ensure rights and benefits. The flag isn't good enough for them, because it doesn't convey the requisite fear, the belief that everything teeters on a knife's edge, and only certain "good guys" keep everything from spiraling out of control. They change the flag to suit their own ideological needs, just as they accused the left of doing.

What the Israeli center-left is doing is brilliant. It's not co-opting the Star of David. It's saying that the flag has a far different meaning than what the Israeli extreme right has given it. And it seems that the Israeli right agrees, and is seething with rage that their foes have retaken the flag. 

Just as I don't want an American flag with a peace sign where the stars should be, neither do I want this dystopian banner. The Stars and Stripes are our heritage, for both good and ill. It's time we stopped its abuse by people who don't believe in what it represents.

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