A flyer I designed appears on the front page of today’s edition of the Ma’ariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel.

Here’s a close up:

The flyer is for a campaign by Alliance for Justice in the Middle East, a student group at Harvard University.

The text calls attention to the enrollment of former Israeli general Dan Halutz in the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. Halutz oversaw the bombing of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. See his dossier here.

And he’s not the first accused war criminal enrolled by Harvard. See a short list of bios on the AJME site. The AJME is campaigning to establish a set of practices to screen for war criminals and serious human rights abusers as part of its admissions and hiring policies.

The campaign was relatively modest to achieve such front page coverage. The group set up a free web site on blogspot. They printed up the flyer and handed it out on campus. They also sent out a press release about the campaign, which resulted in front page coverage.

Here’s the full article in Hebrew on the Ma’ariv web site and AJME’s English translation of it.

Click below for a larger version of the flyer:

For contrast, see another iteration below. I think it’s a little more evocative, but maybe less direct.

Update: The flyer is featured online at Time and Al Jazeera. See other coverage of the campaign.

Two poster mockups. Click above for high resolution PDF’s. Please reproduce and distribute.

Got a another idea? Here’s the unicode text.

Protesters against Israeli ‘disengagement’ from the West Bank and Gaza have taken to the streets flying orange ribbons in support of the settlers.

Only Palestinian groups protesting the occupation have been using orange ribbons for years.

Via Reuters, July 1, 2005:

“Israeli Arabs sue settlers over orange protests

An Arab party has asked an Israeli court to stop right-wing Jews using orange in protests against withdrawing from Gaza settlements, saying the colour was already theirs.

‘If we appear now in a march in the streets with orange, people will think we are settlers,’ said parliament member Azmi Bishara of the Arab Balad party, which is fundamentally opposed to settlements on Israeli-occupied land.

Orange, displayed on ribbons, flags and shirts, has emerged as a powerful pro-settler symbol in the run-up to the pullout. It is the municipal colour of the main Gush Katif Jewish settlement bloc in Gaza.

Bishara said his party has used an orange flag and logo since 1999, and launched the lawsuit after being flooded with calls from constituents.

The Balad party was concerned that use of the same colour by ultra-nationalist Jews would damage its image and confuse its anti-occupation message, he said.

It filed its suit in Haifa District Court on Thursday to prevent the Yesha settler council and other right-wing groups from using orange, saying the colour was now sending a ‘colonial, racist message’ that would make it difficult for Balad to continue using it.

‘You build an image. If you look at our logo you will see it is orange. Our flags are the same flags,’ Bishara said. ‘Real damage has been done.’

The Yesha council said it knew nothing of the suit.”

First their land, then their symbols. Oddly enough, this Haaretz article notes that while orange is the season’s hot color elsewhere in the world, it has become a fashion faux pas in Israel and Palestine.