The Human Spirit: When Orange is Just Orange
June 23, 2005
The shop windows resonated with orange. Bathing suits and bangles, T-shirts and towels, drinking glasses and eye glasses, even the new line of salad bowls with matching tongs were bright orange. Not in Judea, Samaria or the Gaza Strip, but in Italy, near the trend-setting center of Milan, where orange is the dominant color this summer.
If you were an Israeli, you had to smile. The Europeans weren't honoring the protest movement of the Ukraine. Nor did they have any idea that they were flaunting the symbolic color of civil protest against the disengagement plan in Israel, any more than we're tuned into the orange protest by the Federated Farmers of New Zealand who are this week tying an orange ribbon to their gates in an agricultural protest.
Orange is simply a fashion statement - the new pink - and as such served as a reminder of how close and yet how far away Europeans are from the Middle East.
In contrast to most of our traveling, the conference that brought my husband (a scientist) and me to northern Italy last week had nothing do with Israel or Judaism per se. That meant we'd be meeting a variety of European participants who could be expected to reflect the attitudes of their home countries. Each time I introduced myself as an Israeli, I braced myself - primed for an acerbic retort - if anyone dared raise an eyebrow or offer a token criticism. Verbal pistols drawn, I was ready to leap to our country's defense with a contemptuous question about those billions of euros to the Palestinians sent for education, spent on detonation.
But I could have left the chip on my shoulder at home. To my surprise and delight, my being an Israeli actually elicited positive reactions. The people I met, from practical shopkeepers to ivory tower professors, admired our spunkiness in standing up to terror, our country's continued innovativeness, and the liberty we enjoy. The owner of a rural perfumery showered me with free samples.
Whether this beaming approval comes mainly out of renewed approbation of Israel's steadfastness, worry about terrorism in their own countries, or a growing dissonance with the espoused stances of the European Union, I don't know. It felt good.
THE CONFERENCE dealt with the rather abstruse subject of "Cifermatics" and attracted more than its share of iconoclasts, so I was prepared to write off the warm reception as a fluke. But immediately on returning to Israel, two Jerusalem friends - one in hi-tech, and the other who was in France to coordinate a joint library venture - related nearly identical experiences.
More exceptions? I prefer to guess that the average European isn't as quick to brand Israel a brutal aggressor as we've come to believe from the press, nor as unthinking as the EU parliamentarian who allegedly demanded DNA proof from exploded suicide bombers to be convinced that the funds contributed by Europeans had bought explosive belts and booby traps. If so, the grassroots hasn't trickled up to the European Union, which continues to act with nihilistic sightlessness.
Supposedly mired in deep crisis, dispirited over the failure of France and Holland to ratify the constitution and beset with budget problems, the EU still finds the energy to obscenely flirt with Hamas. European diplomats assure us they're only the "lowest level talk."
I'd say.
Ironically, potential Europeans tourists should be warned to leave their new orange clothing and shoulder bags at home. They might be stopped at the thresholds of a public building, like the Indian parliamentarians who wanted to give away scarves at the Knesset, or like plaintiffs allegedly asked to check their orange ribbons at the door of a Petah Tikva courtroom by officials who think they should restrict the color.
This misdirected use of authority does not bode well on the eve of what may be the most painful and complicated internal struggle in our history. The beauty of a color as a protest symbol is that it's only a color, not hateful and dangerous words. Color is the ideal vehicle of non-violent civil disobedience, and should be welcomed in a democratic state. Left-inclined teenagers at a Jerusalem crossroads were passing out blue ribbons last week as a purported antidote to the orange ones. There were few takers.
You're not going to find many Israelis enthusiastically looking forward to the disengagement. Those who believe it must go ahead also dread the struggle and the thought of removing other Israelis from their homes. What a mistake is the new political motto of Meimad: "Not all kippot are orange."
But if even some Israelis are now wearing blue as a counter-protest, even-handed judges and security guards will have to eliminate that color as well. Imagine the burden on guards with congenital color-blindness or judges with macular degeneration. Is that really blue, azure, aquamarine, navy or turquoise? Rust, brick, coral, tomato, salmon or a true orange?
Justice, we used to say, is color-blind.
I bought an orange salad bowl to use in Italy. When I put it down on my Jerusalem table last Shabbat, my guests asked if it was a political statement.
Sometimes, as Freud would say, orange is just orange.
