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December 8, 2005
A victory for pluralism
The Magen David Adom is the Red Cross like organization of the state of Israel. It looks like this:
For obvious reasons, they are unwilling to use the red cross, red crescent, and the red lion and sun, a symbol used by Iran until it adopted the crescent in 1982 that are the three symbols for relief agencies authorized for international use by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The ongoing conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors, has allowed 27 members of the International Red Cross to justify excluding Magen David Adom from membership.
Until today. Bloomberg reports that the International Red Cross approved a truly neutral symbol, the red crystal for use in international humanitarian efforts.
Other symbols, including the Magen David Adom were approved to domestic use. With the approval of the host country, other symbols can be embedded inside the red crystal.
That should look like this:
This should allow the Red Cross to get back to important stuff like helping people. More information on the new symbol here.
Posted by OneEyedMan at December 8, 2005 2:19 PM
Comments
I, too, read about this today, and was very pleased.
A historical, note, though, about the Red Cross: I believe it was chosen *not* as a religious symbol, rather, to mimic Switzerland's flag, and be neutral, like the country.
Posted by: Jess H ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.belligerati.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 9, 2005 12:39 AM
Well....
The Swiss Flag is a cross because Switzerland was historically an Catholic country, to this day proving the body guards for the Pope.
Switzerland, as a famously neutral country therefore served as inspiration for the IRC flag, with the colors reversed.
However,
You don't get to choose what symbols mean in that way. When I was a freshman, my roommate and I were the only non-Christians in our section of the dorm. When Christmass came around, we were surrounded by Christmass pageantry, and wanted to assert our own cultural identities though decoration. The problem was that his religious symbol, being a Hindi, was the Swastika. So we said so much for that plan, and our door was unadorned.
The Cross, served as the one of the primary symbols of the Crusades, which had the side effect of acting as a major pogrom against the Jews.
The typical Jew sees the cross as meaning a lot of things, but neutrality is not at the top of the list. In any case, that whole "neutrality and not religion" argument is bogus since they let
the Muslim nations use the crescent!
Let's be honest. In times of war, religious people have served as the backbone of compassionate relief. Religious people engaged in relief deserve to march under a flag of peace that reflect the symbols of their religion. It may be that a proliferation of symbols would create a problem, as well confusion with the flag of Japan. However, that's not actually an issue . There are plenty of other non-Christian, non-Muslim countries willing to use those symbols, so it isn't as though this is unleashing a torrent.
But even if it did, why shouldn't everyone have to use their religious symbol inside of the red crystal?
Posted by: TheOneEyedMan at December 9, 2005 9:42 AM
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