In an announcement, Israeli police mentioned officers had attended the scene to “assess and address” a report on a hotline a few man sporting a kippah with a Palestinian flag.
“During the handling of the incident, the individual was brought to the police station where following clarification, the individual was subsequently released. As a complaint has been filed with the Police Internal Investigations Division within the Ministry of Justice, no further details can be provided at this stage.”
There isn’t any specific Israeli regulation banning public shows of the Palestinian flag. While Israeli courts have considered it as a protected type of expression, Israeli police are authorised to take away or confiscate them if they’re deemed “a threat to public order” or figuring out with a terrorist organisation.
The present far-right National Security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has instructed police to clamp down on Palestinian flags, in a means that Israeli rights teams have mentioned is illegitimate.
Sinclair usually wore his kippah with the Israeli and Palestinian flags on a black background over the previous 20 years, after he specifically ordered it from a store in Jerusalem. He described it as a logo of “the messy ambivalence of my Jewish-Zionist identity”.
“I’m doing all of this as a Zionist, as somebody who chooses to live here, as somebody who believes in the right of Israel to exist and to flourish in security, along with the Palestinians having those same rights as well,” he instructed the BBC. “I’ve not given up on a future where we can live together in peace and security.”
Sinclair mentioned he selected the design of his head overlaying to differentiate himself from right-wing and far-right spiritual nationalists. “When you walk around Israel and people see you in a kippah, they immediately associate you with certain political and religious groups who I don’t want to be associated with to put it mildly,” he mentioned.
“The journey behind it was just trying to figure out a way to keep a kippah on my head. How do I take part in a Jewish ritual that is meaningful to me but do so in a way that feels authentic to me.”
Sinclair, an observant Masorti or conservative Jew, who grew up in north London, mentioned he has typically had constructive reactions and “moving moments” in response to his selection of kippah from Palestinian residents of Israel.
He acknowledged that he has had “some less pleasant moments” too however mentioned that he beforehand managed to interact folks in “interesting conversations about politics”.
After this week’s expertise he mentioned he felt “anger and frustration as well as concern” that he was now on the police radar.
The chief of Israel’s Democrats Party, Yair Golan, criticised the police over what had occurred.
“This isn’t just a story about a kippah that was crudely torn off by police. It’s a story about the collapse of the Israeli police,” he wrote on X.
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem – the place Sinclair works as a lecturer in Jewish schooling – has written a strongly-worded letter to the Israel police pressure.
It mentioned it “is troubled by the blatant violation of freedom of expression in the public sphere and strongly condemns the conduct of the police officers during the incident, in the course of which they cut Dr Sinclair’s kippah”.
In his criticism to the Department for Internal Police Investigations, Sinclair has claimed illegal detention and harm to property. He has requested for compensation for his ruined kippah.
He can also be planning to order a brand new kippah with each flags, and added “some people are saying that maybe it’ll start a trend”.
