The AP and other news services have been blithely passing along information like the following to explain why Israel doesn’t get to keep the Star of David as an emblem upon finally being allowed to be a member of the ICRC:
The red cross symbol was first adopted in 1863 and it reverses the colors of the neutral Swiss flag, without any religious intent. But most Muslim countries refused to use it and the Ottoman empire used the red crescent instead to protect medical workers in the 1876 Russo-Turkish war.
It’s the phrase “without any religious intent” that the AP keeps on throwing in–which is decidedly editorial in tone–that made me want to fact-check their claim. Here’s what I found on The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ website:
The Red Cross was born in 1863 when five Geneva men, including Dunant, set up the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, later to become the International Committee of the Red Cross. Its emblem was a red cross on a white background: the inverse of the Swiss flag. The following year, 12 governments adopted the first Geneva Convention; a milestone in the history of humanity, offering care for the wounded, and defining medical services as “neutral” on the battlefield.
Interesting. Nothing about stripping the religious meaning of the cross out there.
So I looked on the Swiss Embassy site, and found this about the Swiss flag:
The use of the red cross on a white background, which is actually the Swiss flag reversed, was granted to the International Red Cross to commemorate the organization founded by Henri Dunant, citizen of Geneva. Indeed, the plenipotentiaries of 35 nations, assembled in Geneva on July 6, 1906 to revise the “Geneva Convention,” stated as follows in the enacting clause concerning the symbol of the International Red Cross: “To do homage to Switzerland, the heraldic arms of the Red Cross on a white field, which is formed by reversal of the Swiss Federal arms, shall be maintained as a distinctive emblem of the medical services of most armies.
Still too vague. So I went to the official Switzerland website and found this:
The flag of a country is more than just an practical symbol for a country to be used in everyday life. It stands for the country and its people and is therefore of emotional importance – at least with people, for whom people and homeland represent important values.
[…]
In the 13th century, the German emperor carried with him a flag with the cross as a holy sign, understanding himself as a protector of christianity. Besides, he also carried a blood-red flag as a sign of his power over life and death. Occasionally, he granted the right to carry such flags as a special honor to single cities or regions. (The Dukes of Savoy and the City of Vienna bear a white cross on red ground on their coat of arms. The Scandinavian countries and Great Britain as well have a cross on their flags.) Often the right to bear a cross on one’s coat of arms and on a flag was granted together with other privileges, like direct immediacy [direct subordination under the emperor’s jurisdiction without jurisdiction of counts].
The region of Schwyz in central Switzerland, one of the three founding members of the Old Swiss Confederacy, and the one, whose name was later in history used to denote the confederacy as a whole, was granted immediacy in 1240 and carried a red flag from the middle of the 13th century on (yet still without the white cross). In 1289 they supported King Rudolf of Habsburg in a war against Burgundy and received as a recognition the right to represent the crucifixion of Christ and the tools used to torture him in the upper right field on their flag. Originally they painted this symbol on parchment and fastened it on the banner. Only later the cross symbol was painted directly on the banner.
Isn’t that interesting. (It’s the Swiss website that uses a small c for Christianity, not me.) The Swiss flag is simply oozing Christian symbolism, and yet, the AP insists it is a neutral little sideways X or something. And yet, on the same website:
When the International Committee of the Red Cross as a permanent, neutral institution to take care of military and civil persons wounded or imprisoned in war was founded on the initiative of Henri Dunant (a merchant from Geneva, Switzerland) and swiss general Dufour in 1864, Dufour proposed the reversal of the swiss flag (red cross on white ground) as an emblem. Also the armband traditionally used by swiss troops was reused with inverted colors so that medical personnel in wars is obliged to wear white a armband with a red cross according to the Geneva Conventions The national Red Cross organizations in non-christian countries interpreted the Red Cross as a Christian symbol, however, and replaced it by their own religious symbols (red crescent moon in islamic countries, red david star in Israel). The color red on white background was retained.
Once more, it appears that the AP is passing along misleading information. One might even say the AP is passing along untruths. Or is it the practice of the AP to report things that they want to be true, and therefore, they are true?
This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the ICRC refuses to allow the Magen David for reasons other than neutrality. Let me see, what other reason would they not want to allow Jews to use Jewish symbols? Hm… Wait, give me a minute, I’ll get it. And gee, why is it that Israel would refuse to use that emblem, or the Muslim Crescent? Hm. Let me think hard on both of these questions and get back to you.
Meryl,
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).
It’s just a matter of time before Israeli Arab Towns that fly the PLO flag “in defiance” will demand that their ambulance services fly the Red Crescent.
Can’t wait until the MDA adpopt the rest of the symbols from Lucky Charms Cereal. Yeah, that’s good cereal.
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.
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No, no, you got it all wrong.
The Swiss flag is just a white ‘plus’ on a red field, just like the Austrian flag is a white ‘minus’ on a red field.
And since opposites attract, the two countries share a border.
Now, if Switzerland were to join the EU, the two flags would cancel each other out and result in the inverted Japanese flag!
Can you appreciate the intricacies of this delicate situation?