There is no blue without yellow and without orange

A phrase said by a 19th century Dutch painter sums up Israel today.

Vincent Van Gogh once proclaimed that “That there is no blue without yellow and without orange.”  That may simply have been about painting, expressing that certain colours require others for their existence.  Some have suggested there is a broader philosophical meaning to this statement:  that all things are connected and that the tranquil colour blue works best when contrasted with the vibrant colours yellow and orange.

Unrelated to the world of art, Van Gogh’s comment is a statement about Israel right now.  Blue is Israel’s colour, found on its flag (derived from the blue stripes on a prayer shawl or tallis).

Yellow is the colour of the national impertaive (which sadly is not accepted as an impertive by some in Israel) to return all the hostages as quickly as possible.  Now is already too late.

Yellow is the colour of the movement to free the hostages. Photo by David Matlow.

Orange symbolizes the two gingy Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, who were kidnapped with their mother  Shiri from Nir Oz on October 7, 2023 then aged nine months and four years.  They have not yet been returned and there is grave concern about their survival.

Protest in Jerusaelm in support of the release of the Bibas family. Orange scarves being distributed. January 31, 2025. Photo by David Matlow.

Israel’ as a nation (blue)  requires the return of all of the hostages (yellow) including the Bibas children (orange) and their mother Shiri.

The orange as a fruit has been integral to the development of the state of Israel.

Oranges are “new” to Israel having arrived around the year 900 CE with Arab conquerors, with sweeter varieties arriving in the 15th-16th century with Portuguese merchants (which is why the word orange in Arabic is burtaqal).

The Hebrew word for orange is tapuz (which is a combination of two words: tapuach (apple) and zahav (gold).  The term tapuach zahav was coined in 1827 by the writer Shimshon Bloch who took the phrase from Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.”  The term was truncated into tapuz in 1932 by Israeli grammarian  Yitzhak Avineri.

Oranges grown by both Jewish and Arab farmers became an important export starting in the late 1800s, with the brand name Jaffa first used in 1870.

Given the orange’s importance to the pre-State economy, there were a number of initiatives to increase the yield and thereby the profitablility of the orange groves.  Often these initiatives were controrversial.  Here are two examples.

Advertisement for pesticides produced by ICI (Levant) Inc. From the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow (www.herzlcollection.com). Photo by David Matlow

In 1926, four British chemical companies merged to create Imperial Chemical Industries, which became one of Britain’s mightiest industrial companies. It was the brainchild of Alfred Mond who became the new company’s managing director and chairman. Mond was an industrialist, financier and proud Zionist, who was president of the British Zionist Federation, founder of the town of Tel Mond, east of Netanya, and a strong proponent for the introduction of electricity into Palestine.

In 1928, Imperial Chemical Industries established ICI Levant as a subsidiary that operated in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Cyprus. Yechiel (Chilik) Weizmann, a chemist and the younger brother of Chaim who headed the World Zionist Organization, became the first manager.

ICI Levant imported pesticides, fertilizers, weapons and explosives, assisted local farmers in pest control and worked to educate farmers on the use of its products. Arabs in Palestine complained that ICI Levant was providing explosives and weapons to the Jews in Palestine, and was favouring Jewish labour for opportunities within the company. The company insisted it was neutral.

Above  is an advertisement for ICI Levant chemicals for use in fumigation. Prior to the Second World War, oranges were Palestine’s most lucrative industry growing from 831,000 boxes exported in 1920-21 to 13 million boxes in 1938-39. Yechiel Weizmann articulated the importance of ICI Levant’s pesticides for Palestine’s economy and agriculture when he said:

“The future of ICI is the future of Palestine, and what is the future of Palestine if not the future of orange trees; the future of orange trees is the extermination of the harming diseases.”

ICI Levant played another important role in the future of Palestine. In November 1945, an unknown man arrived at the company’s warehouse claiming to be a representative of the Hebron municipality and left with five tons of sodium nitrate. Two months later, eight armed men and women broke into the company’s offices in Tel Aviv and took ten tons of sodium nitrate.

Sodium nitrate is used in fertilizer… and explosives.

Share certificate for American Fruit Growers of Palestine, Inc. from the Herzl and Zionism collection of David Matlow (www.herzlcollection.com). Photo by David Matlow.

Above is a share certificate for American Fruit Growers of Palestine, Inc. (in Hebrew: Agudat Hahaklaim B’Eretz Yisrael), a Massachusetts company that was incorporated in 1920 with the objective of introducing modernized, mechanized packaging technology to Palestine to increase the fruit’s value and lower labour costs.  The company opened a 1,200 square meter plant in Petah Tikvah in 1921.  A 26 meter deep well was dug to provide water to a fruit washing machine.  Conveyer belts were installed to sort the fruit according to size, a method that was used in California.

The company failed within two years since a portion of the oranges was damaged in the modernized process, and the farmers did not want to expose their crop to this risk without security provided by the company for the damage (which it did not have the resources to provide).

The orange may be a golden apple but for the investors in American Fruit Growers of Palestine, Inc.  (including Hyman Stitskin who owned this certificate) there was no gold.  In August 1924, all of the company’s assets were sold in a bankruptcy sale.

It seems that not all interventions by the United States in the region work out.

In as much as the orange fruit has been integral to Israel’s development in its early days, the return of the Bibas children and their mother (orange) and the other hostages (yellow) is critical to the future of the State of Israel (blue) that its worthy of the highest ideals and dreams that have been invested in the Jewish homeland since the days of Herzl (whose lifespan overlapped with Van Gogh for 30 years).

The two orange stories are derived from the weekly Treasure Trove  which is a project of the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca).  Past Treasure Troves can be found on facebook at #cjntreasuretrove.