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	] with the blue stripes]]		] with the blue stripes]]
		⚫	It has been alleged by some groups that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag actually represent the rivers ] and ], which some Zionist thinkers (such as ] and ]) had claimed as the boundaries of ], the land ] to the ]s by ]. <ref>Genesis 18: "The Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates."</ref> Those making this allegation insist that the flag "secretly" represents the desire of Jews to conquer all of the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, which would involve conquering and ruling over much of Egypt, all of Jordan, and some of Syria and Iraq. ] also made the allegation, <ref>, '']'', September 1988.<br>ARAFAT: Yes, because they don't want it. Look at the slogans they use: that
	Many people in the Middle East are convinced that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag really represent the rivers ] and ], and that Israel is intent on expanding to these limits.

	This is a long-standing Biblical tradition, and there is some evidence that Zionist supporters in the last 125 years have also aspired to it.

	The following listing explain some of the reasons why people might believe this (though none of them indicate that the flag was actually designed for this purpose).
	#"From the Nile to the Euphrates" is partially justified by the Bible. God promised Abraham (Genesis 15:18) ''"To your descendants I give this land from the River of Egypt to the Great River, the river Euphrates".'' (] and other sources imply that this passage refers to a water-course near the Nile, within modern Egypt, and not the Nile itself).
	#Moses promises his descendants in Deuteronomy 11:24 that ''"every place where you set the soles of your feet shall be yours. Your borders shall run from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea."''
	#In 1898, Theodore Herzl (founder of Zionism) planned to ask the Ottoman sultan for a territory stretching from the Egyptian frontier to the Euphrates. Theodor Herzl and Isidore Bodenheimer regularily spoke of Jewish settlement in ''"Palestine and Syria,"''. So did the Jewish National Fund and the Zionist Congress. In 1902, Herzl spoke of settling Jews in Mesopotamia <ref>Theodor Herzl, Zionistisches Tagebücher, 1895-1899, edited by Johannes Wachten, Chaya Harel, et al. (Berlin: Ullstein, 1983), vol. 2, p. 650.</ref>. However, at this stage, the new Israel might have also been in Uganda, Madagascar or Argentina.
	#Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: ''"From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates."'' (See passage above for commentary on ]).
	#The British ambassador in Istanbul, in 1910 ''"the domination of Egypt, the land of the Pharaohs, who forced the Jews to build Pyramids, is part of the future heritage of Israel."''<ref>Secret letter from Gerard Lowther to Charles Hardinge, 29 May 1910, Foreign Office 800/193A (Lowther Papers). Quoted in Elie Kedourie, Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p. 256.</ref>
	#At least one of the inter-war founding Zionists intended an Israel bigger than the one we know. Vladimir Jabotinsky (founder of Revisionist Zionism, precursor of Likud) was quoted in 1935 saying ''"We want a Jewish Empire"'' <ref>Robert Gessner, "Brown Shirts in Zion" New Masses, Feb. 19, 1935, p. 11.</ref>.
	#Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the UN Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: ''"The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon."''
	#David Ben-Gurion in 1954 ''"the border of Israel will be where the army takes it"'', when ex-Iraqi Jew Naeim Giladi meets his (by now) ex-Prime Minister and asks why Israel does not have a constitution.
	#According to the then President of Syria, Hafiz al-Asad, the Israeli general and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan visited the Golan Heights shortly after its capture by Israel in 1967 and announced that ''"the past generation established Israel within its 1948 borders; and you have to establish a Greater Israel from the Niles to the Euphrates."''<ref>Damascus Television, Feb. 18, 1986</ref>. (Assad died in 2000 after 30 years in power - his informant was the Jewish Polish communist author Robert Gessner, referenced above at #6).
	#Sa'd al-Bazzaz in his book ''"Gulf War: The Israeli Connection"'' <ref>translated Namir Abbas Mudhaffer (Baghdad: Dar al-Ma'mun, 1989)</ref> claimed something along the same lines: ''"We have taken Jerusalem .... and are now on our way to Yathrib and Babylon"''. (Cities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq). 22 years later, Yitzhak Shamir called Syrian leader's Hafiz al-Asad talk on the subject ''"sheer nonsense."'' ).
	#Menachem Begin (Israeli Prime Minister 1977-1983) was quoted by American television evangelist Jerry Falwell as saying that the Bible predicts the Israeli state will eventually include portions of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait.<ref>Tyler Courier-Times-Telegraph, 5 Feb. 1983; reported in The Los Angeles Times, Feb. 6, 1983</ref>.

	(The last 3 of these clips would not normally be included, as they do not meet regular Misplaced Pages ] - they are included in order to illustrate that "From the Nile to the Euphrates" is still believed, by Zionist and anti-Zionist, to be a national aim of at least some Israelis).

	A further catalogue of Zionist and Israeli statements on this topic appear in the (out of print) book by Ass'ad Razzouq, Greater Israel: A Study in Zionist Expansionist Thought (Beirut: Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, 1970), especially pp. 83, 87-90, 92, 96-97, 99-103, 144-45, 167-69, 178-81, 187, 209, 212-14, 230, 234, 240, 243-45, 249-52, 264, 278-82, 286, as well as Maps 3 and 4. (reference provided by the Zionist Daniel Pipes ).
	The claim that Zionists still want "From the Nile to the Euphrates" first came to the attention of many people when Yasser Arafat stated it in an interview in 1988. Several times in 1990 (including in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in Switzerland) he went round waving an Israeli coin, the new 10 agora piece, claiming it showed a map of of "Greater Israel" (it doesn't) and that there'd been an inscription to ''"From the Nile to the Euphrates"'' in the Knesset for many years (there hadn't).

	Other accusers of Israel simply make unsourced statements such as: ''"By guile, treachery and bloodletting, the Zionists plot to annex all of Jordan, virtually all of Syria, half of Iraq and a large part of Saudi Arabia and all of the rich cotton lands of the Nile Valley. It would be a simpler matter then to grab Yemen, Aden, Muscat, Qatar and Oman with their rich oil development. Israel is already well advanced in the development of its first nuclear warhead"'' .

⚫	Those making this allegation insist that the flag "secretly" represents the desire of Jews to conquer all of the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, which would involve conquering and ruling over much of Egypt, all of Jordan, and some of Syria and Iraq. ] also made the allegation, <ref>, '']'', September 1988.<br>ARAFAT: Yes, because they don't want it. Look at the slogans they use: that
	the land of Israel is from the Euphrates to the Nile. This was written for many years over the entrance to the Knesset, the parliament. It shows their national ambition-they want to advance to the Jordan River. One Israel for them, what's left for us....		the land of Israel is from the Euphrates to the Nile. This was written for many years over the entrance to the Knesset, the parliament. It shows their national ambition-they want to advance to the Jordan River. One Israel for them, what's left for us....
	Do you know what the meaning of the Israeli flag is?		Do you know what the meaning of the Israeli flag is?

Revision as of 23:25, 18 November 2006

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The flag of Israel was adopted on October 28, 1948, five months after the state's establishment. It depicts a blue Star of David on a white background, between two horizontal blue stripes. The blue color is mandated only as "dark sky-blue", and varies from flag to flag, ranging from a hue of pure blue, sometimes shaded almost as dark as navy blue, to hues about 75% toward pure cyan and shades as light as very light blue.

Origin of the flag

The flag of the State of Israel is intended to portray a Star of David on a tallit, the traditional Jewish prayer shawl.

The Israelites used an indigo colored dye called tekhelet; this dye is now believed to have been made from the snail murex trunculus. This dye was very important in both Jewish and non-Jewish cultures of this time, and was used by royalty and the upper class in dyeing their clothing, sheets, curtains, etc. (The dye from a related snail can be processed to form Tyrian purple called argaman.)

In the Torah, the Israelites are commanded to dye one of the threads of their tallit (prayer shawl) with tekhelet; when they look at this dye they will think of the blue sky, and of the God above them in Heaven. Tekhelet corresponds to the color of the divine revelation (Midrash Numbers Rabbah xv.). Sometime near the end of the Talmudic era (500-600 CE) the industry that produced this dye collapsed. It became more rare; over time, the Jewish community lost the tradition of which species of shellfish produced this dye. Since Jews were then unable to fulfil this commandment, they have since left their tzitzit (tallit strings) white. However, in remembrance of the commandment to use the tekhelet dye, it became common for Jews to have blue or purple stripes on their tallit. The idea that the blue and white colors were the national color of the Jewish people was voiced by early on Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894), an Austrian Jewish poet. In his poem, "Judah's Colors", he writes:

When sublime feelings his heart fill, he is mantled in the colors of his country. He stands in prayer, wrapped in a sparkling robe of white.

The hems of the white robe are crowned with broad stripes of blue; Like the robe of the High Priest, adorned with bands of blue threads.

These are the colors of the beloved country, blue and white are the borders of Judah; White is the radiance of the priesthood, and blue, the splendors of the firmament.

In 1885 the agricultural village of Rishon LeZion used a blue and white flag to mark its third anniversary. A blue and white flag, with a Star of David and the Hebrew word "Maccabee", was used in 1891 by the Bnai Zion Educational Society.

David Wolffsohn (1856-1914), a businessman prominent in the early Zionist movement, was aware that the nascent Zionist movement had no official flag, and that the design proposed by Theodore Herzl was gaining no significant support. He writes:

At the behest of our leader Herzl, I came to Basle to make preparations for the Zionist Congress. Among many other problems that occupied me then was one that contained something of the essence of the Jewish problem. What flag would we hang in the Congress Hall? Then an idea struck me. We have a flag — and it is blue and white. The talith (prayer shawl) with which we wrap ourselves when we pray: that is our symbol. Let us take this Talith from its bag and unroll it before the eyes of Israel and the eyes of all nations. So I ordered a blue and white flag with the Shield of David painted upon it. That is how the national flag, that flew over Congress Hall, came into being.

While this flag emphasizes Jewish religious symbols, Theodor Herzl wanted the flag to have more universal symbols: 7 golden stars symbolizing the 7-hour working quota of the enlightened state-to-be, which would have advanced socialist legislations.

According to a 1911 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia, a flag with blue and white stripes and a Magen David in the center flew with those of other nationalities from one of the buildings at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. It implied that it flew there in relation to large meetings of Zionists. That expo was the World's Fair hosting the 1904 Summer Olympics.

Flag gallery

World War II Jewish Brigade recruitment poster: "For Salvation and Vengeance!" World War II Jewish Brigade recruitment poster: "For Salvation and Vengeance!"
1944. The Jewish Brigade headquarters. Both Union Jack and the Jewish flag are visible
July 15, 1945. Buchenwald survivors arrive in Haifa
May 14 1948. David Ben-Gurion pronounces the Establishment of the State of Israel
March 10, 1949. The newly established IDF raise the improvised "Ink Flag" over Eilat March 10, 1949. The newly established IDF raise the improvised "Ink Flag" over Eilat
Yom HaShoah 2000, Auschwitz. Polish-Jewish March of the Living
2006. The Israeli Flag next to the Western Wall
The Flag flying on a ship on the Mediterranean Sea

Controversies

Claims of "Nile to Euphrates" territorial ambitions

It has been alleged by some groups that the blue stripes on the Israeli flag actually represent the rivers Nile and Euphrates, which some Zionist thinkers (such as Avraham Stern and Israel Eldad) had claimed as the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael, the land promised to the Jews by God. Those making this allegation insist that the flag "secretly" represents the desire of Jews to conquer all of the land between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, which would involve conquering and ruling over much of Egypt, all of Jordan, and some of Syria and Iraq. Yasser Arafat also made the allegation, and repeatedly tied this notion to the stripes on the Israeli flag.

Both Zionist and anti-Zionist authors have debunked the claim that the stripes on the flag represent territorial ambitions. Daniel Pipes notes "In fact, the blue lines derive from the design on the traditional Jewish prayer shawl", and Danny Rubenstein points out that "...Arafat... added, in interviews that he gave in the past, that the two blue stripes on the Israeli flag represent the Nile and the Euphrates... No Israeli, even those who demonstrate understanding for Palestinian distress, will accept the... nonsense about the blue stripes on the flag, which was designed according to the colors of the traditional tallit (prayer shawl)..." Persistent critic of Israel and Zionism Israel Shahak is equally explicit. In his The Zionist Plan for the Middle East he states

A good example is the very persistent belief in the non-existent writing on the wall of the Knesset of the Biblical verse about the Nile and the Euphrates. Another example is the persistent, and completely false declarations, which were made by some of the most important Arab leaders, that the two blue stripes of the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and the Euphrates, while in fact they are taken from the stripes of the Jewish praying shawl (Talit).

Saqr Abu Fakhr, an Arab writer, has also spoken out against this idea. He demonstrates that the "Nile to Euphrates" claim regarding the flag is one of seven popular misconceptions and/or myths about Jews which, despite being unfounded and having abundant evidence refuting them, continue to circulate in the Arab world.

Nevertheless, the Hamas Covenant states "After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates," and as recently as January 29, 2006, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar issued a demand for Israel to change its flag, citing the "Nile to Euphrates" argument.

Proposals to change the flag

It has recently been suggested that additional symbols be added to the flag with which non-Jewish citizens of Israel, such as Israeli Arabs, would be able to identify. Such proposals have not gathered any significant percentage of public support.

References

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs publication The Flag and the Emblem by art historian Alec Mishory, wherin he quotes "The Provisional Council of State Proclamation of the Flag of the State of Israel" made on October 28, 1948 by Joseph Sprinzak, Speaker.
Varied examples; Flag ~75% toward cyan from pure blue full article:The Flag and the Emblem Accessed July 28, 2006.
Simmons, Rabbi Shraga. Tallit stripes, About.com's "Ask the Rabbi". Accessed April 3, 2006.
Frankl, A. L. "Juda's Farben", in Ahnenbilder (Leipzig, 1864), p. 127
Sholem, G. "The Curious History of the Six Pointed Star; How the 'Magen David' Became the Jewish Symbol", Commentary, 8 (1949) pp. 243-351.
Zionism article (section Wide Spread of Zionism) by Richard Gottheil in the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1911
Genesis 18: "The Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the River Euphrates."
Playboy Interview: Yasir Arafat, Playboy Magazine, September 1988.
ARAFAT: Yes, because they don't want it. Look at the slogans they use: that the land of Israel is from the Euphrates to the Nile. This was written for many years over the entrance to the Knesset, the parliament. It shows their national ambition-they want to advance to the Jordan River. One Israel for them, what's left for us.... Do you know what the meaning of the Israeli flag is?
PLAYBOY: No.
ARAFAT: It is white with two blue lines. The two lines represent two rivers, and in between is Israel. The rivers are the Nile and the Euphrates.
Rubin, Barry. The PLO between Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism, Background and Recent Developments, The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993. Accessed Apr 3, 2006.
^ Rubenstien, Danny. Inflammatory legends, Haaretz, November 15, 2004. Accessed April 3, 2006.
Pipes, Daniel. Imperial Israel: The Nile-to-Euphrates Calumny, Middle East Quarterly, March, 1994. Accessed April 3, 2006.
Abu Fakhr, Saqr. "Seven Prejudices about the Jews", Al-Hayat, November 12,13,14, 1997.
Shiloh, Scott. Mofaz: Hamas Acting Responsibly; Hamas: Israel Must Change Flag, Arutz Sheva, January 30, 2006. Accessed April 3, 2006.

External link

The Israeli Flag (Jewish Virtual Library)

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