Palestinian flag hoisted at Berlin's Reichstag a day before Kristallnacht anniversary

Pro-Palestinian activists took down the German flag flying in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin and raised a Palestinian flag in its place, according to several Israeli outlets. The Times of Israel reported that a man climbed the very tall pole, which it described as dozens of metres high, and exchanged the German Flag of Unity for the Palestinian banner. According to that report, the Palestinian flag stayed at the top of the mast for roughly an hour before the authorities managed to take it down.

Those involved were detained. The Telegram news channel Abu Ali Express said the activists removed the German flag in the morning, threw it to the ground and are being questioned on suspicion of insulting the symbols of the state. News.co.il carried the same account. The number of people arrested differs between reports, as set out below.

The Reichstag and the Flag of Unity

The Reichstag in central Berlin is the seat of the German parliament, the Bundestag. The flag involved was not an ordinary building flag. Ynet, the news site of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, described the site as a national monument marking the unification of Germany and said the activists vandalised it. The Times of Israel likewise identified the banner as the Flag of Unity, which stands for German reunification.

A post on X by an account called Open Source Intel, embedded in the Times of Israel report, gave the height of the flagpole as 30 metres and said two accomplices filmed the climb. That figure comes from the social media post, not from police or from the newspaper's own reporting.

Timing: the eve of the Kristallnacht anniversary

Ynet placed the incident in the context of the calendar. It said the flag was swapped one day before the world marks 88 years since Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass", the pogrom in which Nazi mobs attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues across Germany. The anniversary is a fixed point in German and Jewish remembrance, and Ynet framed the episode around it in its headline. None of the reports says whether the activists chose the date deliberately, and none quotes them.

How many were arrested

The reports do not agree on the number of arrests:

• Ynet's full report said 3 suspects were detained.
• An earlier Ynet news alert said 2 people had been arrested.
• The Times of Israel, citing German media, said the man who climbed the pole and two accomplices were arrested. The embedded X post also referred to three people held by German police.
• Abu Ali Express and News.co.il spoke of activists being arrested without giving a number.

There is a related difference in how the act itself is described. The Telegram channels refer to activists in the plural removing the flag, while the Times of Israel attributes the climb and the swap to one man, with others filming.

The suspected offence

Abu Ali Express and News.co.il both said the detainees are under investigation on suspicion of insulting state symbols, and the X post embedded by the Times of Israel made the same claim about all three people it said were held. German law treats disparaging the flag and other symbols of the federal state as a criminal matter. No report cites a statement from Berlin police or prosecutors setting out the charge directly.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports names the people arrested, identifies any group behind the action, or quotes a statement from German police, prosecutors or Bundestag officials. The arrest count remains unresolved between 2 and 3, and the claim that the German flag was thrown to the ground appears only in the two Telegram channels. No reaction from German or Israeli officials has been reported.