Given that the French-speaking world gave us the science of semiotics, they would be the first to recognise that the Palestine flag, as it is being hoisted and brandished across the French republic at the moment, has come to signify something far more than the aspirant state of Palestine. You don’t have to be Ferdinand de Saussure to appreciate that this signifier has become unmoored from its original meaning. You don’t have to be Roland Barthes to see that this emblem has now assumed a wholly mutated significance: in short, it has become an all-encompassing symbol to denote hatred of the West and of European civilisation.

It serves as a banner for an apolitical, nihilistic lumpenproletariat whose idea of social justice, as we have seen, is looting stores for designer wares, who glory in setting fire to a historic building such as Limoges town hall

It serves as a banner for an apolitical, nihilistic lumpenproletariat whose idea of social justice, as we have seen, is looting stores for designer wares, who glory in setting fire to a historic building such as Limoges town hall

Signs and symbols have no intrinsic meaning, of course, only those tacitly, communally and temporarily attributed to them. For many years, and in many niches in society, to fly the Palestine flag was to parade one’s compassionate virtues, to display empathy for a people living........

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