The Palestine poppy controversy

Wearing a poppy has always been political. Intended as a symbol of commemoration for those who died in war, its association with conflict, violence and, sometimes, nationalist chauvinism stirs up annual arguments as Remembrance Day approaches. And, this year, said Tessa Dunlop in The Independent, the “predictable indignation” is directed at “the Palestinian lobby” for having “appropriated” the poppy “to remember the ongoing horror story in Gaza”.

The enamel Palestine Peace poppy badge, designed by NHS doctor Abdul Qader Ismail, was listed on eBay for £1.78, with profits said to be donated to charities working to “end the occupation and war crimes” in Gaza. Ismail has since drawn criticism for deleted social media posts suggesting that Israel is a cancer, and writing “books for Muslim teenagers justifying stoning and crucifixion”, said The Times.

Not ‘such an outrage’

“The Palestine-Israel conflict is the hot-button issue of our time,” said Dunlop in The Independent. It’s a war in which “words and symbols are heavily contested”, so it’s no surprise that the flower that is the “cornerstone of commemoration” and a “ubiquitous symbol of the fallen” is now “centre stage”.

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Critics of the Palestine Peace poppy fear that identity politics and global conflict will “sully” the poppy’s soothingly British reputation. But it’s already been “picked up as a symbol of right-wing extremists”: I doubt “Britain’s fallen were front and centre in the minds of Tommy Robinson and Britain First when they flaunted poppy iconography alongside their anti-immigration and anti-Islam diatribes”. I’d argue that “the scale of loss” in Gaza “resonates more directly with the First World War” than many other conflicts involving Britain in recent years. “In this context, is it really such an outrage that a few brave souls (and some misguided ones) wear a poppy in the colours of the Palestinian flag?”

The flower has long-standing cultural significance for Palestinians, too, said The New Arab. The Anemone coronaria poppy grows everywhere in Palestine and has long represented a relationship between the people and the land; now it also a symbol of “bitter memories of bloodshed during wars” that is “widely used to support Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation”. And those who object to its association with Britain’s Remembrance Day should be reminded that Palestinian soldiers played a supporting role in the British Army during the Second World War.

A ‘raised fist’

People should be free to wear a Palestine poppy “but we are also free to mock and condemn those who corrupt our traditions”, said Druin Burch in The Spectator. “Symbols carry weight, which is why they are worth stealing.” The now-offline Palestine Poppy website claimed “Israel has a history of appropriating Palestinian culture”. But to make this accusation and then “paint the Remembrance poppy in the colours of the Palestinian flag is killing something and wearing its skin”. The Palestine poppy is “polemic”, a “raised fist”, when “what a poppy should be is an evocation”.

“It is the sheer upside-downness of this which feels like a gut punch,” said Nicole Lampert in The Telegraph. We remember each November those who “fought for our freedoms”, yet others are now trying to “smirkingly appropriate the image of how we remember them”. The freedoms past generations fought for are being “used against us. And it seems like we don’t have the fight to stop it”.