Sombre statistics
At work today we were asked to donate money to the British Red Cross, as part of a dress-down day fundraising activity. I have a problem with supporting the Red Cross, since the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) refuses to accept the Israeli emergency response service, Magen David Adom (MDA), because it uses a red star of David as its symbol. This is despite the fact that emergency services in Arab countries are allowed to be members of the ICRC despite using a red crescent instead of the cross.
Anyway, I decided to donate money to MDA instead. They could surely use it more than the British Red Cross anyway: I found the following statistics on terror attacks in Israel. They make chilling reading.
Anyway, I decided to donate money to MDA instead. They could surely use it more than the British Red Cross anyway: I found the following statistics on terror attacks in Israel. They make chilling reading.
posted by Stephen West at 11:44 am
2 Comments:
People tend to be somewhat shocked when I tell them what the head of the ICRC said about accepting a Star of David.
The annoying thing is that the Red Cross's logo was never the Christian Cross anyway. They should have opposed the Red Crescent on simple grounds of consistency and then the Red Star of David on the same grounds. It was the Red Cross themselves who decided to tacitly acknowledge, quite wrongly, that it was a religious symbol, thereby creating the whole mess in the first place.
I know that the logo was simply the reverse of the Swiss flag, but still... a cross is a cross, a bit close for comfort to Jews who remember pogroms, the Inquisition and the expulsion from Spain, blood libels, etc. And the crusaders would usually warm up on their way to Palestine by killing any Jews they came across, and the same on their return. So Jews have as much reason to object to such a symbol appearing on a service which is dedicated to preserving life. And there is surely some attachment, even if unconscious, behind the Red Cross's tacit acknowledgement of the symbol as having a religious element.
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