The Jerusalem Post shares our disgust with the adoption of a supposedly neutral "Red Crystal" symbol for the Isareli counterpart of the Red Cross, when operating internationally.

The point is to avoid inflicting extreme pain on the delciate sensibilities of Muslims which the the sight of a red six pointed star (the symbol of Judaism and Israel) might cause them when the Israeli Adom Mogen David group joins its counterparts the Red Cross and Red Crescent in providing aid in the wake of disasters. The JPost makes some excellent points:

...we cannot help but feel deeply offended by both this international verdict and our own nation's puzzlingly obsequious embrace of it. Why could there not have been four recognized symbols: a cross, crescent, crystal and the Star of David? Or alternatively, why were the cross and crescent not — like our star will be — forced inside the crystal when operating internationally?.... Evidently even a humanitarian movement, and one which perhaps more than any international body purportedly prides itself on neutrality and impartiality, can baldly discriminate against the Jewish state for decades, and then adopt a "solution" that continues to discriminate against the symbol of the Jewish people.

Rather than rejecting and combatting hatred, it accommodates violence and intolerance. It is no coincidence that, after over half a century of tolerating the rejection of the Star of David, the Red Cross has itself in recent years found it increasingly difficult to operate, and began to seek cover.

Though the crystal is being portrayed as the solution to a general problem, namely places where one symbol or another is not tolerated, in practice the intolerance flows almost entirely in one direction: from the Muslim world against the Star of David and, recently, against the Red Cross too. It is almost impossible to conceive of a situation in which a Christian country, by contrast, would take violent offense to a rescue mission operating under a Red Crescent.

By bowing for so long to the utter rejection of the symbol of the Jewish people, and then devising for it a second—class status, the international community legitimized a hatred that is the antithesis of the Red Cross mission and the cause of many of the casualties it treats.

Sadly, discrimination against Israel, Jews, and even symbols of Judaism, has become so normal that it can be hailed as a triumph of diplomacy good manners. When standards of disapproval are applied only to one group and not the others, that is the essence of invidious discrimination.

Hat tip: Ed lasky

Thomas Lifson  12 11 05