In North Andover, Mass., the message is clear: Palestinian lives matter — Israeli lives don’t.
The tony town — median household income north of $120,000, per Census data — is flying the red, white, black and green Palestinian flag from its common flagpole.
That’s after an October policy change specifically restricted such flag-flying to governmental speech.
Meaning that this message is in some sense official.
Indeed, the town council made a special exception to allow the flag to be flown, allegedly because the request to do so came in right before the new policy went into effect.
That doesn’t pass the smell test: The new flag-raising enjoys a black-letter status that prior ones never did.
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.
That argument, like the flag-raising itself, posits a full moral equivalence between the two sides here.
And such an equivalence does not exist.
Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas
- Hamas chief says a ‘truce agreement’ and hostage exchange with Israel is close
- Hamas captives spill secrets about operating from hospitals: ‘We became their human shields’
- How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?
- Israel war live updates: Follow along for The Post’s latest coverage
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists murdered and burned their way across kibbutzim.
They decapitated babies, raped women, slaughtered whole families and took hostages into the depths of Gaza’s terror tunnels.
Now they force the Palestinian civilians they claim to be fighting for to serve as human shields during Israel’s justified counterattack.
North Andover raising the same flag flown by Hamas backers around the world as Israel bears down on the terror group’s HQ is like an American town hoisting the Nazi swastika during the Battle of Berlin.
One flag-raising supporter whined, “It is not a terrorist flag, and we will not let it be misconstrued that way.”
Semantic games.
That flag is waved in support of Hamas terror worldwide.
Nothing’s being “misconstrued.”
The flag is scheduled to fly until Dec. 7.
But its ugly image will live on for long after that, and the stain will never leave North Andover.
