Poppies and Cultural Appropriation

Was it stolen from the Palestinians?

Today is Remembrance Day for the Allied nations who fought in World War I. The poppy is used to commemorate the fallen British and North American soldiers of that war, after the flower grew in abundance on the battlefields.

There are plans by Palestinian activist groups to disrupt the commemorations. Last year, Palestinian marches were designed take place on this day in competition with British marches; the Palestinians claimed that the poppy is their national symbol and implied that the British are engaged in cultural appropriation.

There are also accusations of Israel engaging in cultural theft with the poppy:

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine since 1948 has led to the simultaneously attempted erasure of Palestinian culture on the one hand, while trying to appropriate Palestinian culture on the other in order to create a new “israeli identity”. A quote from Awab Abdel Fatteh of Mada’ Al-Carmel shares, “if you want to exterminate any people, you first need to exterminate their culture.” There are many examples of this but can be directly demonstrated by the appropriation of the red poppy flower, or the hanoun, the symbol of Palestinian Land Day and Spring, representing hope, perseverance, and sacrifice. In 2013 the so-called state of israel (sic) adopted the red poppy flower as its official national flower.

The red anemone poppy, Anemone coronaria, is widely described as the national flower of the Palestinian People. This is due to its colors, which possess a dual significance. Nasser Abufarha, in a paper titled “Land of symbols: Cactus, poppies, orange and olive trees in Palestine,” explains:

The red flower petals, the black center blossom, a small ring of white in the center around the blossom, and the green stem make up the colors of the Palestinian flag. The flower is believed to have its red color from the martyrs’ blood in the land. The story is an old Palestinian belief that originates back from Canaanite and Phoenician times and relates to Greek mythology. It comes from the story of Adonis, a beautiful boy who was killed by a wild boar in the Lebanese forest; his blood nourished the land and produced the red anemone... The flower came to be associated with renewal, resurrection, and life.

It is not entirely clear how much of Abufarha’s explanation of the anemone poppy’s significance for Palestinians is historical, and how much is an anachronistic projection back to the past. It should be noted that if it does indeed relate to Adonis, this is a story that occurred in Lebanon. This illustrates how the construct of Palestinian identity as being distinct from general Levantine Arab identity is a modern phenomenon.

In 2016, the Palestinian Council of Ministers declared the Faqqua iris as the national flower of the State of Palestine. Despite the significance of the anemone poppy for Palestinians, it was not selected since it had already been selected by Israel as its national flower. But was this a case of Israel engaging in cultural appropriation?

The selection of the anemone poppy as the national flower of Israel occurred in 2013. It was done not by a panel of experts in cultural botanical symbolism, but by a popular vote organized by the Society for the Protection of Nature. The anemone poppy is known as a kalanit in Hebrew (kalaniyot in the plural), due it being identified as the flower mentioned in the Talmud under the name klonita. It won the competition not due to any interest in cultural appropriation, but simply because it has always been a much beloved flower in Israel. This is primarily for the simple reason that it flowers in spring in vast numbers, with its colors varying from red, white, blue and purple depending on the region in the country. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis travel to see these flowers carpeting the countryside. Kalaniyot is also the title of a much-beloved song in Israel about the beauty and perpetual annual blooming of this flower, which became popular in the days leading up to the establishment of the State and has remained an Israeli classic.

Recently, the anemone poppy has taken on even greater significance for Israel. The most popular place for Israelis to view fields of poppies was the Gaza periphery. The Darom Adom (Red South) festival was founded by Ofir Libstein in 2007 for visitors from across the country to enjoy the flowers. Libstein was not only a devotee of nature but also of regional development for both Jews and Palestinians. He planned the Arazim industrial zone that would enable up to 10,000 Gazans to work in Israel every day, and he also provided training, education, and medical treatment to Gazans. In 2023, Libstein hosted a group of 700 Christian Zionists to dedicate the “Christian Embassy Nature Park,” a section of Be’eri Forest that they had rehabilitated after it had been burned over recent years by Gaza arsonists launching fire kites and balloons. Two days later, Ofir Libstein, together with his son Nitzan, became the first known victims of the Hamas massacre, when they were murdered trying to protect the residents of their kibbutz. A project named Kalaniyot, compiling paintings and illustrations of poppies, was subsequently founded in tribute to the memory of those massacred.

Meanwhile, the primary significance of the poppy for Palestinians is in terms of their symbolizing the blood of martyrs. Yet this is hardly unique to Palestinians; as we noted, the poppy was used to commemorate the fallen British and North American soldiers of World War I, after the flower grew in abundance on the battlefields. Was one of these group culturally appropriating the symbol from the others, depending on which came first? Of course not; the poppy is simply something that independently took on significance for both. By the same token, the poppy was selected as Israel’s national flower simply because of its independent popularity among Israelis (some of whose direct ancestors in Israel preceded the ancestors of Palestinians), nothing to do with cultural appropriation.

(This post is extracted from my forthcoming book about Biblical natural history and the significance of Israel.)