Side by side placement of ukranian flag and palestinian flag

[TakeMe2Insanity]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/14/soho-theatre-bans-comedian-paul-currie-jewish-audience-members

Interesting situation: side by side placement of the flags.

It’s the bit, should a person on stage start arguing with the crowd? Should members of the audience object to flags on stage?

@stormy4319trevor
If there are UK citizens who see the flag as a symbol of oppression, I expect they don't object loudly when it's publicly displayed,
You are obviously not familiar with the tensions caused in NI around flags, whether it's nationalists wanting the Irish flag and Unionists wanting the Union Jack it definitely is a symbol of oppression for some and they do object loudly when it is displayed.

Some people living in Britain aren't in Britain by choice. I.e nationalists in Northern Ireland.

What, so if your brother/cousin/friend was murdered by a British person you'd object to the Union Jack being flown anywhere? And you'd think THEY want to kill you? Every Palestinian is not a terrorist, neither is every Jewish person (Jewish groups have committed terror acts too). I'm sure most rationally minded people believe that.

So it's always entitled and petulant not to clap and cheer for any flag that appears on stage?

So it's fine to hound someone from one group out of the theatre but not someone from another group.

@DreamVortex It has nothing to do with the group but the individual and their opinion. There are Israeli's who support what their government is doing and those who don't. Just like there are non Israeli's who support the Israeli government and those who don't.

So it's always entitled and petulant not to clap and cheer for any flag that appears on stage? who said that? Please go back to my original post and reread it , I said both were.
Again I watched two interviews by Liahav, he did not say anything about being kicked out for being Jewish or Israeli, he was kicked out for not liking the Palestinian flag .
Both were being unreasonable , but it’s not what people are trying to make it sound like.

I’m not talking about ‘calling out’, which I take to mean challenging or disagreeing. I’m talking about a mob shouting, harassing and ultimately driving someone out. In a civilised society, we don’t harass people. If they’ve broken the law we go through the process of prosecution etc but we don’t let vigilantism rule.

Sadly no one is 100% safe anywhere, but obviously minorities in the UK are especially unsafe. Higher risk of Black and brown people being shot by the police (and if you are visibly Muslim this is five fold), Travellers largely don't have adequate access to running water/sewage etcetera etcetera.

If my relative was killed in Glastonbury I'd expect the government to find and punish the perpetrator/s, not kill 25,000, many of whom are children in a bid to "eliminate" the killers.

@Dulra @ConnieCounter You are quite right re: Northern Ireland, and clearly it might cause issues there. I'm sorry, I was thinking of my objection to flag flying to show support for a side during wars abroad. I came to the conclusion that the only reasonable flag to fly in Britain is the British one. Otherwise we have internal conflict, and I deeply believe we must find ways to get along, even when we have different cultures living here whose countries of origin are hostile to each other. We could ban the British flag, but I think we need something to express a sense of unity and shared responsibility. There is no way to enforce this or anything I have said, of course.

In a civilised society, we don’t support genocide.

Thats one view that not everyone agrees with. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where @inkworks273 decides what opinions are permitted, you have to accept that different people will approve of different flags. What if I’m in charge of this dictatorship and I say people can be thrown out if they don’t stand for the Union Jack?

Do you not believe in freedom of speech and democracy? Because if not we definitely won’t agree. In a democracy, we don’t let the mob decide what is right or wrong. Do you think it’s ok to let the mob decide?

You are using the word ‘genocide’ as a thought-terminating cliché.

So in the same situation if the audience member had said something blatantly anti semitic and he was asked to leave and the audience joined in with chanting for him to get out, would you have disagreed with the audience?

The groups are "people who don't want to applaud the Palestinain flag" and "people who don't want to applaud the Israeli flag". Apparently one is fine and the other deserves to be abused and harrassed.

You said that not clapping or cheering an Israeli or Palestinian flag is entitled and petulant. So does that apply to any flag by virtue of it being onstage?

so I see this comedian is from NI and thinks that gives him some special insight into the Israel/Gaza situation.
He is comparing the IRA with Hamas. However bad the IRA were they didn't carry out depraved massacres of civilians, using sexual violence, or call for the abolition of mainland Britain.

I can't believe people aren't completely chilled by this story. What were the other audience members thinking, too busy signalling they are on the correct side to reflect on history.

If someone said something antisemitic I would expect the guy on stage to ask security to remove him or her. I wouldn't expect the whole crowd to stand up and start chanting and intimidating.

But that wasn't an option here because the man in the crowd didn't say anything offensive. He just didn't stand up for another nations flag. Which is his right.

I was just thinking the same thing: public abuse of Jews, Jews banned from public theatres...
Where did this wave of vicious anti semitism
come from? It broke out even before the Israelis fought back after the invasion.
The authorities must crack down on this before it gets any worse.

This is what I said
And why was the issue just with one flag but not the other?
the guy was unreasonable to make a fuss about the Palestinian flag and not the Ukrainian flag and the comedian was so unreasonable to single them out for not standing and clapping.

there are so many serious anti Semitic and Islamophobic cases out there , being thrown out of a theatre for not liking a flag is really not one of them, it was not an Israeli flag , the audience did not say I’m Jewish and I’m Israeli , from everything the Guy said on both interviews is that he didn’t like the flag. That’s his words.
the comedian was out of order for throwing them out for sure and deserves to be banned.

Agree

We don’t know what was said.

Being thrown out of a theatre is appalling. It’s not a microagression. It’s not someone accidentally slipping up. It’s direct persecution. This guy may well have looked or sounded Israeli. I don’t know why you’re assuming the comedian had no idea.

I have a feeling if they'd flat out called him a filthy Jew or something you'd find an excuse.

We do know! But regardless perhaps we can agree:

1. If they guy is shouting out racial slurs it’s ok to ask security to remove him.
2. If he simply says he doesn’t like the Palestinian flag, he should be left alone.

Could we agree there’s really no role for the mob?