Post falsely claims Palestinian flag in 1939 included the Star of David | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: The Star of David appeared on Palestinian flag in 1939

A Nov. 30 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows an image of a flag with a gold Star of David on a blue-and-white background.

“Flag of Palestine 1939,” reads the text inside the photo.

The post's caption reads,“You want to free Palestine? Yet this was the flag of Palestine before modern day Israel was reborn in 1948. Like you like to say, 'educate yourself'!"

It was liked more than 10,000 times in five days.

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Our rating: False

The flag shown in the post was never an official Palestinian flag. It belonged to a 20th century Zionist movement in the area. Experts say the territory’s official flags in 1939 incorporated the Union Jack to reflect that the U.K. governed it.

Mandatory Palestine flag rooted in Union Jack

The territory known as Palestine was among the former Ottoman Empire territories placed under control of the U.K. in 1922 as part of the League of Nations’ mandate system. The U.K. administered it until 1947, when the British relinquished control to the United Nations, according to the U.N.’s website.

The iterations of the official flag of what was known during that period as Mandatory Palestine reflect its British governance and incorporated the U.K.'s Union Jack – but did not bear the Star of David, as the Instagram post claimed, multiple experts told USA TODAY.

“In short, that’s totally false,” Wendy Pearlman, the interim director of the Middle East and North Africa studies program at Northwestern University, said in an email.

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Minor variations of the U.K.'s flag were created for the high commissioner (the head of the British government in the territory) or for vessels registered to the territory, Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard University, told USA TODAY. In one such version kept at the British Imperial War Museum, the Palestine High Commissioner's seal appears in the Union Jack's center.

But the flag shown in the Instagram post was never an official symbol of Mandatory Palestine. Rather, it is one of several Zionist flags introduced during the mandate, said Rob Raeside, an editor at Flags of the World. It was shown in a French dictionary as a flag for Jews living in the territory “with little evidence it was taken seriously,” Raeside said.

“It would never have been used by Arabs in that area,” he said.

The present-day Palestinian flag has a red triangle on its left side along with black, white and green stripes. It was designed for the Arab Revolt uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1916 and was raised as the symbol of the Arab national movement in 1917. It was re-adopted as the official flag in 1948, according to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

Reuters also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim Palestinian flag bore Star of David in 1930s | Fact check