Ever since I was little, I’ve thought colors were important. Colors help identify things in nature; colors help us identify which clothing belongs to us in a family’s dirty laundry pile; colors help us identify different buildings when traveling or when going for a job interview and finding the right place; colors draw us to the arresting eyes or hair or complexion of people; colors help remind us of what foods we are consuming; colors help us remember which color to wear if we wish to support a protest.

We need color!

I cannot imagine not being able to see and revel in the infinite varieties that surround us throughout our lives; I’m aware of the good fortune of being able to appreciate colors, an ability that some lack.

I’m drawn to bright, bold hues such as those displayed by tulips and other springtime flowers as well as icy, sparkly gold and silver of year-end holiday festivities. I even like the blinding white of snow (as long as I’m not caught in a blizzard).

Colors can dictate your mood – at least it does for me. Wearing black reminds me of funerals; I’ve attended so many since the age of five. No color there, to my mind; a room painted in black conveys claustrophobia and darkness to me, nothing else. I know black looks good on some people, perhaps giving them the aura of sophistication or the illusion of looking slimmer. Black is not for me.

RED is for me. I LOVE red! Red is passionate. Red symbolizes love on Valentine’s Day. Red symbolizes good luck and happiness in Asian cultures and is worn by brides in some countries. That’s how I prefer to think about red.

Red symbolizes political ideologies, too. Communism. America’s Republican party – thanks largely to mass media since the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Red also symbolizes Canada’s “liberal red”. In the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, red is also the colour of the labor movement and the Labour (spelled Labor in Australia) parties in those countries. All major socialist and communist alliances and organizations have used red as their official color; red was chosen to represent the blood of the workers who died in the struggle against capitalism.

Red is on the flags of countless countries around the globe representing governments of all political stripes that ebb and flow with time. The oldest symbol of socialism (and by extension communism) is the Red Flag, which dates back to the French Revolution in the 18th century and the revolutions of 1848.

Before this nascence, the colour red was generally associated with monarchy or the Church due to the symbolism and association of Christ’s blood.

GREEN is my second-favorite color. Earthy. I love most shades of green! Except when vegetables are overcooked and then become a sickly shade of green-gray. Red and green…Christmas colors, that’s for me, though I’m not a big Christmas person.

Green is also on many countries’ flags. Brides in some countries wear green. There is a political party called the Green Party, which is in many countries, including the USA and often used by environmental groups. Green has sometimes also been linked to agrarian movements, such as the Populist Party, in the U.S. in the 1890s and the current-day Nordic Agrarian parties, as well as the National Party of Australia, a conservative party traditionally representing regional and agricultural interests. Irish Nationalist and Irish Republican movements have used the color green.

Green, considered the holy colour of Islam, is used to represent Islamism such as Hamas, Saudi Arabia and Islamist parties. Green is a color used for protest, such as the Iranian Green Movement (or Persian Spring) in 2009.

In most of Latin America, green is associated with pro-choice movements, the colour started being used in Argentina as a symbol of third wave feminism and abortion rights, with a green scarf as a symbol.

BLUE is also a popular color. Not my favorite color; I don’t ever want to live in a blue house or have a room in my home painted blue, no matter how pretty the shade. Yes, that’s how strongly I feel about blue! I don’t mind wearing blue jeans, though. You just won’t find a lot of blue in my wardrobe; it doesn’t have high priority when I choose what I want to wear. And I do enjoy a clear blue sky on a sunny day and can admire other people’s blue homes or rooms…I just don’t want to be part of it; it will make me FEEL blue to be surrounded in blue.

Blue symbolizes political ideologies as well. People associate it with their country’s flag. Or the police (in America). Or the Democratic party (USA) – though blue was used briefly by President Grover Cleveland and President Benjamin Harrison to represent the Republican Party in the late 1880s and and used by Texas for similar color-coding to assist its Spanish-speaking and illiterate citizens during that same time period. Blue is the color of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and British conservatives of the UK; “Tory blue” is associated with more right-wing, conservative political thought.

Globally, blue is used by left-leaning parties (Japan, South Africa, Belgium) and right-leaning parties (Romania, South Korea, Austria). In Brazil, both left and right like blue!

In the realm of religion, blue is of prime significance in Judaism.

In everyday life, blue can be the color of an ID card…which can translate into real world life and death situations if a person possesses one…or not.

To illustrate in stark terms the meaning of blue for many people in one part of the world, I share below an article with you by a Palestinian, Layal Hazboun, who writes of her father, who, like countless others, desired the blue ID card, which grants rights to Palestinians living in Israel.

These rights include having medical insurance, traveling via Israeli airports, and opening a bank account in Israel. But for a long while Hazboun’s father only had a green ID card.

According to Aljazeera’s The colour-coded Israeli ID system for Palestinians:

As Israel expanded its control and occupation over four territories in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, it devised a system of population control that remains in place five decades later.

After the 1967 war, the Israeli military declared the occupied territories to be closed areas, making it mandatory for Palestinian residents to obtain permits to enter or leave. Palestinians who were abroad during that time missed out on the subsequent population census and were not granted identification papers.

The clear delineator that has separated and dictated the lives of these Palestinians is the colour-coded identification system issued by the Israeli military and reinforced in 1981 through its Civil Administration branch. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip have green IDs – generally issued once they turn 16 – while Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Israel have blue IDs.

The cards affect everything from freedom of movement to family unity.

To me, the blue and green identification card system seems terribly complicated on the face of it. There seems to be many different layers of each card, depending on where one lives and what one needs it for. You can read more about this here and in the Aljazeera link above.

Read Layal Hazboun’s story, and learn how colors are used in the worst way: to dehumanize and divide Palestinians. In this light, blue and green symbolize suffering or limited freedom(s):

In Palestine, green and blue are more than colors

Is Israel’s decades-long use of the blue and green identification card system forced upon Palestinians much different than the Nazi leaders forcing Jews to wear the Jewish badge between 1939 and 1945?

In the parts of German-occupied Poland, Governor General Hans Frank ordered, on November 23, 1939, that all Jews over the age of ten wear a “Jewish Star”: a white armband affixed with a blue six-sided star, worn over the right upper sleeve of one’s outer garments. There were heavy penalties for those caught not wearing it.

Later, on September 1, 1941, Security Police Chief Reinhard Heydrich decreed that all Jews in the Reich six years of age or older were to wear a badge which consisted of a yellow Star of David on a black field to be worn on the chest, with the word “Jew” inscribed inside the star in German or in the local language of whichever region Germany had occupied.

On a historical note: over the course of more than ten centuries, Muslim caliphs, medieval bishops, and – eventually – Nazi leaders used an identifying badge to mark Jews. It’s horrible. Period.

The Nazis used the badge not only to stigmatize and humiliate Jews but also to segregate them and to watch and control their movements; so too has Israel forced Palestinians to have green or blue ID cards to control their movements and segregate them, which ultimately affects every aspect of their lives. For decades.

WHY has the world tolerated this for so long?

Just please remember: Palestinians are our fellow human beings and ought not to be ignored.

The naysayers who challenge Palestinians’ very existence and dignity deserve every criticism and pushback, particularly if they claim to be God-loving persons.

To my mind, I think you dehumanize yourself every time you dehumanize others – or support those who do.

I hope someday that Palestinians will not have to have their lives dictated by ID cards, no matter what color.

Sources

Harvard Gazette
Enchroma
We Are Not Numbers!
Wikipedia – Iranian Green Movement
HuffPost
Wikpedia – Green Party of the United States
Green Party US
Aljazeera
Palestinian Diary
United States Holocaust Museum
Metro UK
Learning in Palestine
Wikipedia – Political Colour
Color Combos