So the International Committee of the Red Cross voted today (by a talley of 98 to 27 with 10 abstentions) to recognize the red crystal…

Maybe their spokesman can be Cap’n Crunch.

Its ironic that they used to make us wear the Magen David, and now we can’t.

No one who cares to read what the Swiss have to say about themselves can doubt that their flag carries Christian symbolism. But that’s not the same as saying that a Christian message necessarily was in Dunant’s mind when he chose his flag. Most likely, he was just a product of his time and place: The cross was simply a part of the (Christian) air that everyone breathed. No one thought about the implications for their organization because everyone (everyone who mattered, that is) was Christian.

Nevertheless, the symbol acquired—or reacquired—religious meaning when the Turks chose to interpret it that way and Dunant’s organization accepted that. At that point they could have all sat down, thought about it in a systematic way and chosen a symbol that would settle the issue for all time. But perhaps they weren’t all that interested in, or knowledgeable of, religio-politics and mostly wanted to get on with pulling wrecked soldiers off battlefields. In any event, once they had made the Christians and Muslims happy, who else was there? In 1876 who would have guessed that the Jews would one day matter; and who cared about Buddhists and Hindus? So they took the obvious way out.

In solving the problems that arise from that, there are genuine concerns about the over-proliferation of symbols. There is also, now, the feeling that they should have learned enough by now to look further down the road than they did before and not simply fix today’s problem.

Which is not to say that anti-Israel politics haven’t also been disgustingly in evidence. It’s not the present solution of the “red crystal” that’s the problem; it’s that it took so long to get on with it. The solution that has just been adopted was proposed at least a decade ago. In fact a conference to vote on it was in the works just before the second Intifada started, and it was cancelled because it was judged that the “atmosphere” was no longer right for it to succeed.

Which was, in other words, an acknowledgment that this was a political issue not a procedural one, but I never saw one editorial or comment-piece to that effect anywhere, then or since. That’s the real problem: that the Arabs were allowed to shut Israel out for so long and almost no one (with the notable exception of the American Red Cross)—none of the NGOs, and humanitarians, and peace activists, and equal-rights activists, and you-name-its-for-justice activists, nor, heaven forbid, the management of the ICRC—said a word.

Phew. End of rant (and sorry for writing more on your blog than you did).