By Tal Shalev and Dana Karni, CNN
Tel Aviv, Israel (CNN) — Israeli police detained a Jewish man on Monday for wearing a kippah embroidered with an Israeli and a Palestinian flag — then cut up the religious head covering, he says — in a rare case that has drawn national attention.
Alex Sinclair, a 53-year-old author and adjunct lecturer at the Hebrew University, told CNN that police approached him while he was sitting at a cafe in his hometown of Modiin about 22 miles southeast of Tel Aviv. Within minutes, he said, he was taken to a local police station, searched and detained.
In a detailed Facebook post, Sinclair wrote that he had been working on his computer when “a religious man came over to me with an angry face and shouted that my kippah is against the law.” Sinclair said he attempted to engage the man in conversation but that the man refused to listen and called police.
Two officers soon arrived and told him that his “kippah is against the law and that they are going to confiscate it,” Sinclair said.
He was then taken to a local police station. “Take off your belt. Face the wall, hands against the wall. They frisked me. Then they locked me in the cell, on my own, no water, no phone, no idea of what was going on or what the process would be,” he wrote of the experience.
After about 20 minutes of detention, the officers agreed to release him, initially without returning the kippah he has worn for 20 years, Sinclair said on Facebook. It was only after he insisted that the officers returned what was left of it, he said.
“She had cut out the Palestinian flag,” he wrote, referring to a young policewoman he said was in charge. “She’d taken my possession, a religious ritual object, something that is very dear to my heart, and destroyed it.”
Sinclair’s case may well be unique. Israeli police have for years confiscated Palestinian flags from Palestinians, accusing them of disturbing the peace. And Palestinian flags are occasionally displayed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish rallies, where a portion of the population opposes the modern state of Israel. But it is incredibly rare for police to take action against a Jewish man for wearing a kippah, even if it shows Palestinian and Israeli flags.
While Israeli law does not ban public display of a Palestinian flag, Israeli authorities can restrict or remove it if they determine it constitutes support for a terrorist organization or poses a genuine risk of public disorder. In 2023, Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, instructed officers to remove Palestinian flags, a directive that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said was illegal.
In a statement, Israeli police acknowledged the incident but made no mention of the flags or of Sinclair’s allegation that an officer ruined his kippah. It said they received a call alerting them to a man “wearing a kippah bearing a Palestinian flag” and that he was detained but then released “following a clarification process.”
Sinclair told CNN on Thursday that his kippah holds symbolic meaning for him, as “a proud Jew and proud Zionist that also believes that the Palestinians, like the Jews, are a people with a right to self-determination and a legitimate historical connection to this part of the world.”
“There are people on both sides who try to erase the identity of the other. Being a Zionist does not contradict recognizing the rights of the other people who also have a legitimate connection to this country,” he said.
“I don’t want to over-react to this but it’s hard not to,” he wrote in his Facebook post. “It’s hard not to say that this is the kind of thing that fascist regimes do. It’s hard not to feel worried and anxious and frankly devastated that this is the direction that Israel is moving in.”
Sinclair has filed a complaint with the Department for Internal Police Investigations, alleging unlawful detention and damage to property. He is also seeking compensation for the kippah.
As an observant Jew, he told CNN that his Jewish identity is “very important.” But he said his kippah distinguishes him from right-wing religious-nationalist groups and far-right politicians whom he accused of a “perversion of Judaism.”
He has also vowed to wear a new kippah with both flags as soon as possible.
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