There are moments in the life of a nation so absurd, so unthinkable, that were they not observed with one’s own eyes, one might suspect the hand of Swift or Orwell at play. That a council in England should declare the cross of St. George too “provocative” to fly; that the Union Jack should be hidden from sight, as though guilty of some unnamed misdemeanor. It is the stuff of satire, of sketches performed before a winking audience, not of sober public policy. And yet here it is, decreed with the earnest face of officialdom: our own emblems of history and belonging treated as dangerous contraband.

Meanwhile, the streets below those stripped flagpoles are festooned in green, black, red, and white. The Palestinian flag, a symbol now so ubiquitous in Britain that one might think it part of our municipal décor, waves proudly from bridges, from campuses, from every other demonstration where the air is thick with slogans. “From the river to the sea,” they chant, “globalize the intifada.” No bureaucrat scribbles a memo against such words. No council speaks of “provocation.”

And here we arrive at the crux: it is not neutrality at all. It is the quiet absorption of our public space into the cause of Hamas. For what else can we........

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