The Massachusetts community of North Andover used to feel like home to Marc Freedman, president of Congregation Ahavat Olam.
Now, what he calls the “symbol of anti-Semitism” flies in the town square below the American flag after the town’s select board approved putting a Palestinian flag up for the world to see.
“It is a symbol to just eliminate the entire Jewish population,” Freedman said, according to Fox News on Thursday.
Freedman called members of the board “a bunch of cowards” for doing what they knew was morally reprehensible just to ensure that somewhere, somehow, the town would not be sued.
The city North Andover, Massachusetts has officially raised a Palestinian flag
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 16, 2023
“They took a legal initiative, a legal statement from counsel that said you need to follow specific guidelines and must raise this flag, when in their hearts, in their hearts, I know every single one of them did not want to raise their flag,” Freedman said. “That’s not what leadership does.”
The request was made by Selma Khayal, a student. Her sister, Jenna, explained the reasons.
“Palestine is still under siege. The people in Gaza are still suffering, they are still being bombarded. This flag represents its people. It represents the culture. It is not a terrorist flag, and we will not let it be misconstrued that way,” she said, according to the Daily Mail.
The town had flown an Israeli flag after the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israelis at the hands of Hamas.
Officials in @North_Andover, MA, have decided to fly the Palestinian flag on the town common until Dec. 7. Because why wouldn’t you raise a flag in honor of the savage terrorist regime that has just murdered or kidnapped dozens of US citizens? pic.twitter.com/qCRKgABfP0
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) November 16, 2023
“If Israel gets their flag to fly in the North Andover common, then Palestinians deserve that same right,” Salma Boulal, who attended the meeting, said, according to WFXT-TV.
The Palestinian flag will remain up until Dec. 7.
When the New York Post got wind of the decision, it lambasted the town.
“In North Andover, Mass., the message is clear: Palestinian lives matter — Israeli lives don’t,” the Post wrote in an editorial, saying the message to Jewish residents was “You’re not welcome.”
The Post said the town’s claim that its hands were legally tied “doesn’t pass the smell test.”
“Now, some may object that the town already flew the Israeli flag after the Hamas atrocities, so criticizing this flag-raising must be racist or colonialist or any of the other pejorative buzzwords favored by the woke left. No, no and no,” the Post wrote.
“That argument, like the flag-raising itself, posits a full moral equivalence between the two sides here. And such an equivalence does not exist.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
