Two Sides of the Same Flag: Visitors to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Facebook page have chosen this logo for President Obama’s visit to Israel next month.
Politico reports:
It’s official: Visitors to the Facebook page of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have chosen a logo for President Obama’s visit to Israel next month.
The winner, above, got 2,600 “likes” beating out two others (below), which garnered 786 and 521, respectively.
Netayahu’s office is promising a big social media push around the visit. So far, there has been much more publicity about the trip in Israel than there has been in the United States.
Here are the runner ups:
The Jerusalem Post adds:
National Security Council head Yaa’cov Amidror, who is coordinating Obama’s visit, told the cabinet Sunday that there will be an emphasis during this visit on utilizing social media to get the public involved, as is being done in choosing the logo.
He said a media center will be set up to accommodate the hundreds of journalists expected to cover the visit, and that Israel will try to take advantage of the interest to showcase its high-tech industry. . .
One government official deflected criticism that the logo idea was kitschy, saying there was a great deal of public enthusiasm in the visit, and this was one way of tapping into it. He chuckled dismissively when asked if there would also be a soft drink sponsor.
Great flag logo! The Palestinians can use it, too! It exactly expresses the problem of allowing the USA to play any roll at all in world relations with Israel (i.e., the UNSC veto).
It is interesting to me that, in flag design, the part nearest the pole (the hoist, the other end is called “the fly”) and specifically the upper portion (the canton, where the US has the stars) is considered the position of honor. This is why sub-national flags often contain the national flag in the canton. (See, generally, the entire history of British colonial flags.)
The right of this image is the hoist and the left is the fly. (In states where language are read right to left, the convention is often that the upper right is the canton. In the west, where languages are generally read left to right, it is the reverse. This is further demonstrated by the fact that the US flag’s fly (the stripes) is reproduced, not the hoist.)
So, in this logo, Israel took for itself the position of honor, insulting the USA in the process.
(It’s also interesting that they used the IDF’s roundel and inserted it into the design, rather than the star that appears on the National Flag.)
Flags can’t hide the rottenness of Zionism
http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=380
“The Israelis have done pretty much what they pleased with the Palestinians, taking their land for their own, and for immigrant American religious fanatics; annexing Palestinian farms and destroying their crops; seizing control of the water resources of the West Bank; building “separation walls”; and sequestering Islamic and Christian places of worship. These actions have shamed millions of their American supporters, and inspired others to form vigilante bands to silence Israel ’s critics and persecute Arab professors at American universities.
This has won Israel nothing but hatred. What actually is happening is that the Palestinian occupation is driving numbers of Israelis and their supporters toward moral and political suicide, so that one may ask if in a hundred years, or a thousand years, there will any longer be an Israel where Jewish worshipers will recall the psalm “God is a Righteous Judge, strong and patient; and God is provoked every day.””
I just showed this to someone who knows zip about the flag parts Woody mentions. He said the logo is saying Israel is bigger than the USA, more powerful, and screw you.
I said it’s a logo for a presidential visit. He said then diplomatic decorum is what is called for, not public relations. There is a protocol for flags. He said the flags should be shown in their entirety. Israel showed all of their flag elements, but chose the lower right corner of the American flag, diminishing it. He said do you think if the Queen of England came to visit that they would diminish the royal seal and debase it like that? Not a chance. They’d be sticking that royal seal on everything she walked into.
If the US has a state dinner at the White House, our nation doesn’t comport itself like this. This bernays sauce came out of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office. Does Netanyahu have any idea how to comport himself internationally or is he really a yahoo? Is Israel that much of a schlub?
Anyone who feels the need to say “unbreakable alliance” in an infinite loop is afraid of the split. Knows it will come eventually.