Magen David Adom and Yesha

I recently accused MDA - the Magen David Adom, Israel's Red Cross - of practicing a form of apartheid in that it has kowtowed to immoral demands to remove the Jewish symbol from its ambulances in the areas of Judea and Samaria.

The Yesha Council has been prominent in its criticism and now has uploaded FAQs and the Memorandum of Understanding.

Some highlights:

It all started when, in 2005, the MDA requested to join the IRCC which then demanded that an agreement be signed with the PA emergency services that it would halt operating in all the territories of the Land of Israel, slated to become the Jewish national home as a result of the historic connection of the Jewish people to that geographical area, gained in 1967.

They did.  Here's one page of the document singed by Dr. Noam Yifrah

Let's enlarge for you the most relevant sections:

Note:

1.  not territory 'administered by the Palestinian Authority' but in a sweeping surrender, MDA put its signature to acknowledging territory "occupied by Israel in 1967" without borders and without a different term other than "occupied".

2.  what is this "national society"?  what nationality? in what "Palestian territory"?  all very unclear.

3.  what "internationally recognized borders"?  there are none, at present, vis a vis the PA, only Egypt and Jordan as only those two states have signed a formal peace agreement with Israel.  the other lines are green, or blue, cease-fire or armistice lines.  not borders.

Who provided legal counsel?  B'tselem?  Peace Now?  Gideon Levy?

Do they do not understand that even the Western Wall is outside its area of operations now?

And the Jewish star symbol is banished.  Verbotten.  Is it a religious symbol, therefore prohibited by the ICRC charter? * But the crescent is still there although a "crystal" will be permitted to include a Jewish star - "The crystal was approved over Muslim objections in a hard-fought diplomatic conference in December 2005. The treaty authorizing the new symbol is entering into force six months after Switzerland and Norway became the first two countries to ratify it. “We are pleased they created especially for us a new symbol that will be accepted the world over,” said Dr. Noam Yifrach, chairman of the executive committee of Magen David Adom. The Israeli organization puts the red Star of David inside the crystal’s frame.

Well, here's the Wiki entry:

Service on the West Bank - Controversy arose in 2011 when MDA began to redesign ambulances stationed in the West Bank under the pretense of wishing to differentiate between ambulances directly operated by MDA and those operated by the regional councils. It was suspected that the MDA management agreed to remove the Red Star of David logo as part of the memorandum of understanding signed in 2006 upon being accepted as a member of the ICRC, and stop servicing the area of the West Bank.[9] In October 2011, Yonatan Yagodovsky, director of MDA’s fundraising department, denied the accusations and said regarding the use of their logo in the West Bank that "MDA will continue to use its emblem and logo, and no one ever asked us to take it off."[10] In January 2012, the ICRC confirmed that MDA had in fact agreed to stop all service within the West Bank.[11]

As of November, ICRC wasn't that happy for it needed to reaffirm "the necessity for effective and positive coordination between all components of the Movement of Red Cross and Red Crescent for the full implementation of the MoU between the PRCS and MDA" and pointed out that it:

...2.notes with regrets that full implementation of the MoU has not yet been realised as observed by the monitor;

3. strongly urges MDA to fulfil its obligations without further delay and complete the efforts underway to bring its operations into compliance with the geographic scope provisions of the MoU;...

Did you know that contributions to MDA cannot be employed for services in Yesha?

Did you know that even the president of MDA, Prof. Yehudah Skornick, admitted on IDF radio Galei Tzahal that the agreement was a mistake?  (Ask him: 03-6947287 and his exact words:
עם זאת הודה נשיא מד"א כי ההסכם שחתם הארגון לקראת קבלתו לצלב האדום היה טעות. לדבריו, 14 נקודות ההזנקה של מגן דוד-אדום ביהודה ושומרון ימשיכו לפעול, למרות שהדבר מנוגד להסכם.)

What is going on? Cannot they withdraw from this process and have the government deal with issues which reflect on the political and internal law matters that are contained in this instance?  After all, the 14 stations in Yesha will still be operated in violation of the agreement.

P.S. My friend, Abba Richman from Efrat, disagrees (in Hebrew, though) with the analysis of MyIsrael.
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*

The Red Cross emblem has aroused controversy for almost as long as it has been around. First adopted in the 1864 Geneva Convention, the red cross on a white background was formally described in the 1949 Geneva Conventions as intended to be a “compliment to Switzerland,” formed by reversing the Swiss federal colors: a white cross on a red background. Turkey, asserting that Muslim soldiers found the cross offensive, unilaterally began using a red crescent in 1876, and this was accepted in the 1929 update of the Geneva Convention along with the now unused “red lion and sun” for Iran. Israel sought approval of the red shield of David, a six-pointed star, at the 1949 Conference that produced the current Geneva Conventions. ICRC officials feared it would lead to a flood of new national and religious symbols and already had requests for recognition of the red flame, shrine, bow, palm, wheel, trident, cedar, and mosque. One delegate suggested a red heart. All such proposals were rejected for fear that abandoning a universally recognized symbol would endanger human lives. The ICRC did not officially recognize societies that used unauthorized symbols: from the red shield of David to the green cross of the Cruz Verde, a renegade national society set up in El Salvador in 1980.


However in December 2005 a diplomatic conference of signatory countries to the Geneva Conventions formally adopted a 3rd Additional Protocol approving the adoption of a new Red Crystal emblem. The emblem was chosen for its neutrality—it has no national, religious or cultural connotations, although national societies can incorporate existing symbols within the Crystal’s center. Following the adoption of the Red Crystal, the Israeli national society, the Magen David Adom, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were recognized by the ICRC and admitted into the International Federation.

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