Why does Palestinian flag emoji appear when searching ‘Jerusalem’?

Fury has erupted after users discovered that an emoji of the Palestinian flag appears when some type Jerusalem into their emoji search.

Users of Google’s Android devices and Apple's iPhones reported the issue, which came to light this week after the iPhone’s latest software update, iOS 17.4.1.

The predictive text function allows users to select emojis that match the word they have typed. Most other capital cities do not prompt the keyboard to display national flags. The Palestinian flag appears in the English UK version of the latest keyboard update when Jerusalem is typed but allegedly is not visible on several other keyboards, including English US.

The Google keyboard on Android also showed the flag when the Israeli capital was written out[Missing Credit]

Countdown presenter Rachel Riley directed her concerns to Apple and its CEO Tim Cook in a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday morning that pointed out how national flags do not appear for a list of other capital cities.