Flag of Israel

How to read it

Israel’s Provisional Council of State adopted the flag on 28 October 1948, choosing the flag of the Zionist movement. Its proclamation in the Official Gazette sets the flag at 220 cm long and 160 cm wide (about 86½ by 63 inches): a white background with two dark sky-blue stripes 25 cm broad along the whole length, 15 cm from the top and the bottom, and between them, at equal distance from each, a Star of David made of six dark sky-blue stripes 5.5 cm broad forming two equilateral triangles. The Flag and Emblem Law, enacted in May 1949, sets the flag’s legal status; the Israel State Archives give the official proportions as 8:11.

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The tallit and the blue stripes

At the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, Zionist tradition tells, David Wolffsohn held up his tallit and said, “Why do we have to search? Here is our national flag.” In his own account he ordered “a blue and white flag with the Shield of David painted upon it”. The art historian Alec Mishory, in an article from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, gives one explanation of the stripes: they recall the one blue-dyed strand of the ritual fringes (tzitzit), the colour called tekhelet, which the Torah requires in one strand. Rabbi Meir said that colour recalls the sky.

The Star of David on the flag

Mishory notes that the Star of David, unlike the menorah or the shofar, was not a uniquely Jewish symbol. Following Gershom Scholem, he writes that it spread widely in the 19th century, and that it suited Zionism because it was already common among Jewish communities without carrying clear-cut religious associations. On the flag, in his reading, the star expresses Jewish unity and the blue stripes and white background stand for the precepts of the Torah.

Why the Zionist flag was kept in 1948

In June 1948 the Provisional Government invited designs for the flag, and on 11 July it chose one by the graphic artist Otto Wallisch: two blue stripes with seven gold Stars of David on the white between them, the Israel State Archives record. The Provisional Council of State rejected it and set up its own committee, which consulted Jewish communities abroad and decided on 28 July 1948 to adopt the Zionist flag. Moshe Sharett had argued for a different flag so that Jews abroad flying the Zionist flag would not be taken to fly a foreign state’s flag; Diaspora leaders replied that they preferred to keep it, the World Jewish Congress writes.

The shade of blue and the proportions in practice

The Israel State Archives hold the official decision of 18 January 1950 on the shade of blue, with a sample and directions for preparing the colour. They also note that nobody enforces the 8:11 proportions, so Israeli flags are made in a wide range of shapes.