The Heart That Refuses to Bleed
By Avi Davis November 23, 2001
For those of us born after the Holocaust and living in the West,
the rumble of institutional anti-semitism often resonates as a faint
echo from a past that is not entirely recognizable. We take for
granted that Jewish organizations, whose reach is international
and whose work extends well beyond local concerns, will be
accorded respect by the wider community of nations.
Nevertheless, once in a while this belief is rattled by an incident
that raises the lid on the steaming hatred that still seems to
seethe just below the surface of even the most benign causes.
That happened two weeks ago with the abrupt resignation of
Bernadine Healy, president of the American Red Cross. The
International Red Cross is one of the world's most idealized and
best known humanitarian causes. But for fifty years there has
been a disquieting aspect to this organization's work. It will not
recognize nor admit to its ranks a sister organization in Israel -
Magen David Adom. The ostensible reason for this is that the
Magen David Adom's symbol, a red star of David, does not
conform to the accepted images of the IRC which are either a
cross or a red crescent. Magen David Adom, in existence for 70
years and carrying out life saving functions all over the world,
has repeatedly requested admittance to the international body
but has been just as regularly rebuffed. Meanwhile, the American
Red Cross has quietly acquiesced in this blatant prejudical policy
for years.
That was until Healy became president of the national body.
Recognizing that nothing short of a divorce would shake the
international body's resolve to maintain its policy, Healy fought a
long and bitter campaign to compel the roof body to own up to its
discriminatory practices. The American Red Cross withheld its
annual dues from the international body for two years while Healy
embarked on personal diplomacy that stirred up a hornet's nest
of accusations of wrongdoing in the international center in
Geneva. This crusade reached its denouement in mid-October
when the Board of Governors of the ARC, apparently
embarrassed by Healy's commitment to principle during a time of
dire emergency, forced her resignation. So ended a noble quest
to have a profound and historic wrong redressed.
The policy of the IRC would not be so callous and unreasonable if
it failed so completely to recognize the invaluable work carried
out by the Israeli organization, both at home and abroad. From
the genocidal massacres of Rwanda to earthquake disasters in
Turkey and Armenia to famine emergencies in Ethiopia and
Eritrea, the MDA has been a full contributor to international relief
efforts without being once accorded the international recognition
or status it deserves. Notwithstanding even this, it is well known
that the MDA does not discriminate at all between Arabs and Jews
or between Palestinians and Israelis. Its simple credo - the
protection and rescue of human life, is one that exists in concert
with that of the International Red Cross and yet apparently finds
no sympathetic ear within the IRC bureaucracy.
One does have to wonder how such a deep historic injustice has
been able to stand with little obvious challenge for so many
decades. Not that we need to look far for answers. The French
Red Cross president, Marc Gentilli's response to the American
boycott was instructive. Besides calling on the Palestine Red
Crescent Society to immediately apply for membership to the
international body, (before Palestine even becomes a state), he
referred to Healy's campaign "as a disgusting maneuver to
coerce the IRC to accept the Red Star of David as a third symbol
of the organization." Gentilli's remarks, of course, leave little
doubt of the repugnance in which he holds that symbol itself.
The failure of the International Red Cross to accord the MDA
recognition would be shocking if it could be regarded as an
isolated incident. But sadly it fits in squarely with intolerance in
other such "universal" human undertakings such as sport, music
and scholarship where the Jewish state regularly suffers exclusion
and discrimination. We can only hope that Healy's valiant efforts
will at least shame the leaders of the ARC into corrective action.
But in the meantime, for those who care about the reputation of
humanitarian causes, the consuming irony remains that, despite
Healy's courage and pertinacity, the one organization so strongly
associated in the public imagination with blood drives and
life-saving, also allows itself to be characterized as a movement
that views one peoples' blood as less pure than the blood of
others.
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