Flag of Israel

What the flag of Israel looks like

The flag of Israel has a white field with a blue hexagram, the Star of David, in the middle. Two blue horizontal stripes run along the top and bottom edges. The proportions are 8:11, a little squarer than most national flags. The star is made of two overlapping equilateral triangles and is centered between the stripes.

The blue is described by the law as a shade of blue; it is traditionally compared with tekhelet, the blue dye mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. You can see it in miniature in the Israel flag emoji, and in print quality on the Israel flag download page.

Israel flag meaning and symbolism

The pattern is most often traced to the tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl, which is white with blue or black stripes. Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement wanted a flag that would be recognizable as Jewish without being religious, and the tallit offered a familiar image. The white and blue are also read as purity and the sky, and the blue connects with a color in the Hebrew Bible used in the fringes of garments.

The Star of David, or Magen David ("Shield of David"), has been a Jewish symbol for centuries. It appeared on a flag of the Jewish community of Prague in the 14th century, and by the 19th century it was widely used as a sign of Jewish identity. The star has no single official meaning in the law of the state, and its origin is debated, though the name is linked in tradition to King David.

History of the Israeli flag

The flag was developed by the early Zionist movement. A blue and white flag with a star is said to have been first raised in 1891 in a Jewish settlement in Ottoman-ruled Palestine, in the town of Rosh Pinna. In 1896 Herzl proposed a different flag, white with seven gold stars, in his book Der Judenstaat. At the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 a flag with the tallit design and the star, associated with David Wolffsohn, was displayed, and it was used as the Zionist flag from that time.

During the Second World War the Jewish Brigade of the British Army carried a similar flag in 1944. When the State of Israel was established on 14 May 1948, the same flag was flown over the new state. The provisional council of state formally adopted it as the national flag on 28 October 1948. A competition for a new design was considered but rejected, and the design has not changed since.

Israel has a flag law that makes it an offence to burn or desecrate the national flag. Israeli Independence Day, in spring, is the main occasion when the flag is flown in large numbers. See more flags of Asia.

Zionist flag and the Palestinian flag

The Zionist flag, which is the flag of the Zionist movement, is the same blue and white pattern as the Israeli national flag. Israeli law has not made the Palestinian flag illegal as such. It was restricted in the territories under Israeli control until the Oslo Accords in 1993, and officials have at times ordered it removed from demonstrations since. See the flag of Palestine for its history.