Was there really a Star of David on Palestine’s official flag back in 1939? Nope.

Pro-Israeli social media users have been claiming, wrongly, that Palestine’s official flag before 1948 featured the Star of David, a Jewish symbol. The spread of this false information online has picked up momentum since the start of the latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, which has inflamed questions about the history and geopolitics of the contested region. An image of the flag that has been circulating appeared under the entry for “Palestine” in a 1939 edition of the French dictionary Larousse. However, our team spoke to several historians who said that this flag was only ever used by the Zionist movement which wanted to start a Jewish state in Palestine.