Commentary: Top 10 controversial Israeli stamps

The idea that stamps are a window into a nation's culture and history presupposes that culture and history are matters of national consensus. In reality, culture and history are abstractions. Culture is an abstraction of values, and history is an abstraction of narratives. Values and narratives are never static; they exist in states of perpetual internal tension. Most of the time these tensions are minor, even healthy -- the stuff of dinner table discussions -- which is what allows societies to function and develop as stable systems. Controversy is what ensues when values or narratives clash. When controversy rises above a certain pitch or when there is too much of it for too long, it starts to undermine the society's stability. It signals that values or narratives have moved so far apart from each other that they can no longer peacefully coexist.

Controversy offers observers the most penetrating insight into a nation's culture and history, because it exposes the fissures on either side of which important ideas are debated with passion. That makes controversial stamps, more so than ordinary ones, the real window into a nation's soul. The stamps listed below, ordered from least to most controversial, generally fall into one or more of three categories: religion, history and politics. For those familiar with Israeli society, this will come as no surprise, since these are the arenas where public debate is most heated. For all that Israel Post tries to project an illusion of consensus through its stamps, closer scrutiny reveals it isn't always successful in that endeavor. That is in no way a knock on Israel Post. If all Israel's philatelic service ever issued was stamps of flowers and fish, there would be no controversy -- but neither would the stamps be a meaningful reflection of Israeli society.

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10. 1989 "Dead Sea"

בול תיירות ים המלח
1989 Tourism "Dead Sea" stamp

The Orthodox Council of Jerusalem (Hebrew: העדה החרדית ירושלים) is the official leadership body of Israel's ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jewish community. It is known for its capacity to mobilize large numbers of its constituents at the snap of a finger to challenge what it considers state-directed interference in its internal religious affairs, particularly in the areas of education, military conscription and Sabbath observance. Because Haredi Jews generally eschew modern communication technologies such as email and social media, they still rely on the postal service for much of their communication.¹

When Israel Post issued a set of tourism-themed stamps in 1989, one stamp in particular incurred the Orthodox Council's wrath. Designed by Ora and Eliyahu Schwarz, it showed a bikini-clad woman floating in the Dead Sea under a rainbow with a pair of gazelles traipsing overhead. The Orthodox Council declared a boycott of the stamp on account of the woman's appearance and instructed its followers to "demand stamps free of all manners of filth" when visiting the post office.² Ironically, the Minister of Communication at the time was Rafael Pinhasi of the Sephardic Haredi party, Shas, and the Orthodox Council held him personally responsible for the stamp.

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9. 2000 "Dental Health"

בול בריאות השיניים
2000 "Dental Health" stamp

One glance at the stamp above would seem sufficient to infer why it is on this list. The reality, however, is more layered. Designed by Ela Witten, at the time a student at Bezalel, "Dental Health" depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with leaves concealing their private parts; Adam cradles a toothbrush in his arms while a snake tempts Eve to snatch a cupcake from the Tree of Sweets. Dr. Haim Galon, a dentist and former philatelic columnist for Haaretz who in 2010 told an interviewer he had one of the world's most complete dentistry-themed stamp collections,³ petitioned Israel Post's philatelic service to commission the stamp, and they were happy to oblige.

"Dental Health" is an example of Israel Post trying to avoid clashing with the values of one group and in the process drawing the ire of another. In Witten's original drawing, the toothbrush was positioned such that its tip concealed the area of Adam's body now covered by the leaf, leaving the image open to interpretation as to whether or not Adam was exposed behind the toothbrush. To forestall this ambiguity, Witten was instructed to raise the toothbrush slightly and make the leaf over Adam's loins explicit. The stamp was issued without incident in September 2000, and thirteen years passed until a report emerged that the philatelic service had compelled Witten to alter her original design out of fear of religious backlash. Since then, "Dental Health" has been cited by critics as evidence that the philatelic service engages in excessive self-censorship in deference to Israel's religious minority.⁴

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8. 2018 Israel-Estonia Joint Issue: "Litwinsky House"

בול ישראל-אסטוניה
2018 Israel-Estonia joint issue stamp

Israel and Estonia established formal diplomatic relations in 1992 on the heels of the latter's secession from the Soviet Union in 1990-1991. To commemorate Israel's 70th year of independence and Estonia's 100th, the two countries' postal administrations collaborated on the release of a joint issue stamp in 2018. Designed by Renat Abudraham Dadon, the stamp features the Litwinsky House in Tel Aviv's historic downtown area with the flags of Israel and Estonia mounted on the building's roof. The Litwinsky House was built by Yaakov Elhanan Litwinsky (1852-1916), whose son Maurice Litwinsky served as Honorary Consul of Estonia in British Mandatory Palestine, operating a consular office on the second floor of the family home.

The controversy involving the Israel-Estonia joint issue centered not so much on the stamp itself as on the historical narrative expressed in the stamp's accompanying release notes. Writing in Ynet, Israel's number one website, historian Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky decried the release notes' glaring omission of the fate suffered by Estonia's Jews during the Holocaust. Klibansky recounted three stages in the total liquidation of Estonia's 4,000 Jews: 500 Jews were exiled as part of the Soviets' mass deportation of counter-revolutionaries in June 1941; an additional 2,500 Jews fled or were deported by the Soviets over the course of the Nazi invasion; and all but a handful of the remaining 1,000 Jews were slaughtered, at the Nazis' instigation, by Estonians themselves. Klibansky also disputed the release notes' assertion that Estonia was the first European country to grant its Jews cultural autonomy, arguing that Lithuania and Latvia had done so years before. Klibansky concluded that the release notes, written by Estonia's ambassador to Israel, were a brazen attempt at whitewashing history and suppressing the memory of the Holocaust.⁵

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7. 2016 "Aerial Warfare"

בול לוחמה אווירית
WWI in Eretz Israel Centenary -- 2016 "Aerial Warfare" stamp

In 2016 Israel Post issued the second of four stamps in its 2015-2018 WWI in Eretz Israel Centenary series. Designed by Ronen Goldberg, the 2016 stamp, "Aerial Warfare," depicts a uniformed pilot against a background image of a biplane with three gentlemen standing in front of it and the year 1916 hovering above. The pilot is not identified by name, but the stamp's release notes indicate he was German. They also describe the plane as a German Rumpler C.IV and the location where the background scene was captured as an airstrip near the Merhavia Cooperative in the Jezreel Valley.

The problem with "Aerial Warfare" was not the stamp's various German motifs, as at the time Germany was not hostile to the Jewish ethnos; rather, it was the career path of the pilot in the stamp's foreground. Dov Gavish, writing for the blog Oneg Shabbat, revealed the identity of the pilot as Franz Josef Walz, a Bavarian squadron commander who was stationed in Ottoman Palestine in 1917 and developed close ties with the Jewish population there.⁶ What the blog also revealed was that Walz went on to serve in the Nazi air force, or Luftwaffe, during World War II, prompting Haaretz to run an article with a headline demanding, "What Is a Nazi Pilot Doing on an Israeli Stamp?"⁷

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6. 1985 "The Ark"

בול ארון הברית
1985 Festivals: "The Ark" stamp

In May 2017 a model of the Ark of the Covenant was put on display in one of Jerusalem's public squares close to the Old City. Not two days passed and it was destroyed when a group of men -- Haredi Jews, according to unconfirmed reports⁸ -- smashed it to pieces. The vandals may have resented the fact that the model was decorated with thinly veiled Christian messianic motifs, or they may have deemed any reproduction of the Ark an act of insufferable sacrilege. The "Ark of the Covenant" article at the Jewish Virtual Library attests to the uniquely sensitive place occupied by the Ark in the Jewish religious psyche:

As a general rule, Judaism rejects physical manifestations of spirituality, preferring instead to focus on actions and beliefs. Indeed, the story of Judaism begins with Abraham who, according to ancient sources, shattered the idols that were the conventional method of religious observance at the time. [...] Today, Jews do not venerate any holy relics or man-made symbols. ¶ But in the history of the Jewish people, there was one exception to this rule. One made-made object was considered intrinsically holy -- the Ark of the Covenant.⁹

When Israel Post announced that its 1985 Festivals 5746 set, designed by Asaf Berg, would include a stamp featuring the Ark of the Covenant, it prompted Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach of the prominent Haredi Ponevezh Yeshiva to protest the move and announce a preemptive boycott of the stamp. Through a proxy in Parliament, the rabbi demanded that the Minister of Communication cancel the stamp's issue lest the sanctity of the Ark be desecrated. The Minister of Communication at the time, however, happened to be Professor Amnon Rubinstein, founder of the ultra-secular party Shinui. Rubinstein ignored the rabbi's pleas, and the stamp's issue proceeded as planned.^10,11

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5. 1981 "Abba Hillel Silver"

בול אבא הלל סילבר
1981 "Abba Hillel Silver" stamp

Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963) has been called "the undisputed leader of American Zionism" and "American Jewry's most popular and powerful leader."^12,13 His role in securing the support of the United States government for the establishment of the State of Israel cannot be overstated, and he is credited with a similar role vis-a-vis the United Nations. At the same time, no public figure is without his critics, and Silver's politics and religion set him at odds with three major groups in American society: elements of the far right warned that Silver's lobbying on behalf of the Zionist cause in Washington undermined U.S. interests; many of Silver's colleagues in the Reform movement, particularly in the American Council of Judaism, repudiated Zionism as a modern perversion of Judaism; and the Orthodox establishment, while allied with Silver in matters relating to Zionism, rejected the Reform movement with which he was affiliated.

When Israel Post issued a stamp in tribute to Abba Hillel Silver in 1981, it was the third of these groups whose outrage was sparked. The stamp, designed by Ad van Ooijen, features a portrait of Silver based on his appearance circa 1945. Although the stamp's release notes focused exclusively on Silver's activism in the context of Israel's struggle for independence and glossed over his status as a Reform rabbi, the Orthodox press in the U.S. was livid at the perceived endorsement of the Reform movement on the part of the state. They especially wondered how a Reform rabbi made it onto a stamp at a time when the ruling coalition in Jerusalem was headed by a prime minister "who routinely invokes God's name" and in which Orthodox Jews held senior positions. In contrast to the stamp's reception overseas, the Orthodox community in Israel was indifferent toward the stamp, and the press suggested that the reason the stamp's issue went unopposed was that the Prime Minister was not made aware until after the fact that Silver was a Reform rabbi.¹⁴

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4. 2013 "Flags Over the Ghetto"

בול דגלים מעל הגטו
2013 "Flags Over the Ghetto" stamp

The secondary title of this Commentary piece -- visible in the meta data -- is "A look at 10 Israeli postage stamps and the controversies surrounding them." The implication therein is that not every stamp on this list was necessarily a catalyst for controversy; rather, each stamp was in some capacity or another involved in controversy. Case in point: Israel Post's 2013 "Flags Over the Ghetto," designed by Pini Hamou and Tuvia Kurtz. More than having caused controversy, "Flags" was a step toward resolving a preexisting controversy. As alluded to above with the Israel-Estonia joint issue, not every European country has dealt with its World War II legacy the same way Germany has. In particular, relations between Israel and Poland still experience ups and downs on account of divergent WWII narratives. But divergent WWII narratives are also a feature of Israeli society internally, and "Flags Over the Ghetto" compellingly illustrates this reality.

By the time Israel Post issued its first stamp commemorating the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Poland's Poczta Polska had already issued three such stamps. The second of these, issued in 1956, features Leon Suzin's and Nathan Rapoport's 1948 Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw. The 1948 monument is also featured on Israel Post's 1968 "Ghetto Uprising" stamp, and its central figure, Mordechai Anielewicz, appears on a commemorative "Holocaust" minisheet issued by Israel Post in 1983. Anielewicz commanded the Jewish Combat Organization's armed resistance against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, and for decades the prevailing narrative in Israel associated with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had conferred upon him the status of undisputed hero of the revolt. Like Israel's political elite in the country's formative years, Anielewicz's Jewish Combat Organization was infused with socialist ideology, as distinguished from the right-wing ideology of Warsaw's other resistance group, the Paweł Frenkiel-led Jewish Military Union. In 2009 Moshe Arens, one of the leading figures on the right side of Israel's political landscape, published Flags over the Warsaw Ghetto: The Untold Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, where he argued that Paweł Frenkiel and the Jewish Military Union had carried out the most heroic struggle of the uprising and that Israel's socialist establishment had deliberately diminished the Jewish Military Union's legacy in the national ethos. Although the historical debate did not end with Arens's book, it served as the main inspiration for the 2013 "Flags Over the Ghetto" stamp.

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3. 1957 "9th Israeli Independence Day"

בול יום העצמאות התשיעי
1957 "9th Israeli Independence Day" stamp

April 1957 was a watershed month in the annals of Israeli stamp collecting. The period up until then saw philatelic speculation and commerce grow to levels that rivaled the trade volume of currencies and precious metals on Tel Aviv's black market. Already in August of the previous year a "Tibériade" stamp had sold out shortly after entering circulation, and first day covers of a three-stamp Defense set from January 1957 were commanding prices on the secondary market that were hundreds of times what they had retailed for at the post office. However, all of that was merely a prelude to what transpired on 29 April 1957, the day Israel Post issued its "9th Israeli Independence Day" stamp, designed by Otte Wallish. On that day, frantic Israelis up and down the country flocked to the post office praying they could lay their hands on the new issue before it sold out. At one post office in Tel Aviv angry customers rioted and smashed windows. In Jerusalem fifty policemen were called in to control a crowd of hundreds that threatened to storm the post office all at once, detaining seven.

To everyone's surprise, there was no shortage of stamps at any of the post offices that day. In a plot twist that no one saw coming, Israel Post had printed more than six million "Independence Day" stamps -- an unprecedented quantity and well in excess of what the country's population of two million needed. What happened next was what always happens when supply outstrips demand: prices started to fall. Second-hand buyers who thought they'd stock up on "Independence Days" and flip them for a handsome profit soon found that there was no one left to sell to. The stamp market had officially crashed. Was Israel Post justified in bursting the stamp trade bubble by saturating the market? According to Shaul Ladany, philatelist and author of King of the Road, a state of affairs where there weren't enough stamps to service the general public was untenable and Israel Post was right to capitalize on the situation for the benefit of both its own coffers and the public at large. Tibi Yaniv of the Israel Philatelic Federation, on the other hand, accused Israel Post of cynically exploiting unwitting speculators by printing all of the "Independence Day" stamps with the sought-after tab attached as opposed to in sheets with the tab attached only to the stamps in the bottom row. Either way, Israeli philately would never recapture its pre-"Independence Day" hype.¹⁵

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2. 2011 Israel-Gibraltar Joint Issue

בול ישראל-גיברלטר
Israel-Gibraltar joint issue

There are times when controversy around a proposed stamp rises to such heights that the stamp is canceled before it can ever get off the ground. Such was the fate suffered by the Israel-Gibraltar joint issue, originally slated for a 2011 release but scrapped when it was vetoed by the British Foreign Office. Designed by Ronen Goldberg, the stamp featured the Rock of Gibraltar under a Gibraltarian flag on the left side and Jerusalem's Tower of David under an Israeli flag on the right; an outline map showing the locations of the two sites at the Mediterranean Sea's western and eastern extremities, respectively, stretched across the width of the stamp.

What business did the British Foreign Office have deciding which stamps Gibraltar could and couldn't issue? The answer is that Gibraltar is a territory of the United Kingdom, and as such its diplomatic relations are subject to the dictates of the British Foreign Office. Since the Tower of David is located in Jerusalem's Old City and the British Foreign Office does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Old City, the British refused to sanction the design that Israel had submitted and that Gibraltar had approved and advised Gibraltar's philatelic bureau to feature a site in Tel Aviv instead. Pursuant to the UK's position, Israel gave the Gibraltarians a green light to change the design of their stamp as they saw fit and in the meantime began printing its stamp with the original design. The British, however, then further stipulated that the design change must apply not only to Gibraltar's stamp but to Israel's, as well. At that point Israel indicated that enough was enough and informed the Gibraltarians it was withdrawing from the joint issue.¹⁶ The image shown above is a presumed intermediate draft, as none of the stamps Israel printed were ever entered into circulation. Keen observers will notice a spelling error in the Hebrew caption: "ידידותינו" should read "ידידותנו", the difference being "our friends" in the first case and "our friendship" in the second.

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1. 2005 Israel-Germany Joint Issue

בול ישראל-גרמניה
2005 Israel-Germany joint issue stamp

As a first step toward postwar diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany, in 1952 the two countries signed the Reparations Agreement in which West Germany acknowledged its role in the Holocaust and committed to compensating Israel and Jewish survivors over a period of fourteen years, concluding in March 1966. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had expressed hope at the time that the agreement would lead to the normalization of ties between his country and the Jewish state, but strong anti-German sentiment among the Israeli public so soon after the Holocaust made such a move impossible. By the time Israel's leadership started to warm up to the idea of full diplomatic ties, West Germany already had other priorities, namely wresting East Germany from the Soviet Bloc so the two territories could be reunified, which entailed staying on good terms with Israel's Arab enemies, who threatened to recognize East German independence should West Germany and Israel establish formal relations. In 1965, under Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, West Germany officially offered Israel full diplomatic relations, whereupon Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt summoned the Arab foreign ministers to Cairo for the purpose of recognizing East Germany as retribution -- but the ministers failed to reach an agreement. Later that year, Israel and West Germany consummated their diplomatic ties.¹⁴

In May 2004, Germany invited Israel to jointly issue a 2005 stamp commemorating forty years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Israeli government gave its approval in December and authorized Israel Post's philatelic service to proceed with the necessary arrangements.¹⁷ Although the leaders at the time the two countries established formal ties were Levi Eshkol and Ludwig Erhard, the design submitted by Deutsche Post featured David Ben-Gurion and Konrad Adenauer side by side, each under his country's flag.¹⁸ By January 2005, the tone within Israel's government started to change. Responding to media criticism and mounting public pressure,^19,20 the parliamentary committee charged with approving stamp designs rejected the German proposal and instead instructed Israel Post to submit a stamp "that will reflect the historic spirit of Germany's past and its attitude toward the Jews."²¹ Dan Naveh, who chaired the parliamentary committee and was the son of Holocaust survivors, made clear that without a reference to the Holocaust there would be no stamp. Israel's Foreign Ministry warned that the committee's demand at so late a stage would undermine the joint nature of the project and result in a situation where each country issued its own stamp unilaterally. With Naveh refusing to back down, the German designers, Stefan Klein and Olaf Neumann, proposed an alternative to their original stamp design: the flags of Israel and Germany side by side with barbed wire underneath them. Israel and Germany ultimately agreed to move ahead with the new design, but by then the atmosphere of friendly cooperation around the stamp had been lost. The stamps were issued on 3 November 2005 without a joint issue ceremony and with neither country making any effort to promote its stamp locally.

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Honorable mentions

• 2005 Israel-Germany Joint Issue postmark

חותמת הנפקה משותפת ישראל-גרמניה
2005 Israel-Germany joint issue postmark

If the turmoil surrounding the 2005 Germany-Israel joint issue stamp wasn't enough, Israel Post added insult to injury when it revealed its postmark for the issue. The postmark depicts the German coat of arms, a black eagle with its wings spread out, beside the emblem of Israel, the Holy Temple's menorah flanked by olive branches. The problem? The German coat of arms appears to obscure part of Israel's emblem, as if to suggest superiority over it.

• 2014 "Esther Raab"

בול אסתר ראב
2014 "Esther Raab" stamp

When Israel Post announced that a 2006 stamp set devoted to female poets would not include a stamp for Esther Raab (1894-1981), twenty leading Israeli writers and poets drafted letters of protest and brought about the set's cancellation.²² An Esther Raab stamp was issued in 2014 as part of an eight-stamp Pioneering Women series spanning the even-numbered years from 2012 to 2018.

• 1972 "Let My People Go"

בול שלח את עמי
1972 "Let My People Go" stamp

Israel Post's 1972 "Let My People Go" stamp was a call on Soviet and Arab countries, whose Jews were trapped and facing restrictions on the practice of their faith and retention of their identity, to allow their Jewish populations to emigrate. Letters from Israel to Romania that bore the stamp were denied delivery and sent back to Israel.²³

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References

¹ Chanani Bleich (חנני בלייך), "כך דוחקות חברות חרדיות את דואר ישראל." Makor Rishon, 19 March 2019.

² Noah Zevuloni (נח זבולוני), "העדה החרדית בירושלים קוראת להחרמת בולים עם 'תמונות שחץ'." Davar, 22 July 1991.

³ Riki Shamir (ריקי שמיר), "סיפורם של בולים כסיפור אישי." News1, 15 September 2010.

⁴ Ofer Aderet, "The Israel Postal Company's Stamp of Disapproval." Haaretz, 18 February 2013.

⁵ Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky (בן־ציון קליבנסקי), "בול קטן שמסתיר הכחשת שואה." Ynet, 21 September 2018.

⁶ Dov Gavish (דב גביש), "מה עושה טייס גרמני על בול ישראלי?" Oneg Shabbat, 10 February 2017.

⁷ Ofer Aderet, "What Is a Nazi Pilot Doing on an Israel Stamp?" Haaretz, 16 February 2017.

⁸ Itzhak Rabihiya (יצחק רביחיא), "אלמונים חרדים ניתצו והרסו דגם של ארון הברית הגדול בעולם, שהוצב בכיכר צה"ל בירושלים." Scooper, 1 June 2017

⁹ "The Ark of the Covenant," Jewish Virtual Library.

¹⁰ Noah Zevuloni (נח זבולוני), "החרדים יחרימו 'בול־המועדים' בגלל תמונת ארון־הברית." Davar, 16 July 1985.

¹¹ Noah Zevuloni (נח זבולוני), "בולי ארון הברית עוררו סערה ביהדות החרדית." Davar, 23 July 1985.

¹² Jeffrey Gurock, American Zionism: Mission and Politics. Routledge, 1998.

¹³ Ofer Shiff, The Downfall of Abba Hillel Silver and the Foundation of Israel. Syracuse University Press, 2014.

¹⁴ Noah Zevuloni (נח זבולוני), "בול סילבר עורר סערה." Davar, 3 June 1981.

¹⁵ Lior Friedman, "A Lick and a Promise." Haaretz, 11 December 2008.

¹⁶ Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, "Israel-Gibraltar stamp nixed over use of J'lem image." Jerusalem Post, 20 February 2012.

¹⁷ George Lavy, Germany and Israel: Moral Debt and National Interest. Routledge, 1996.

¹⁸ Diana Bahur-Nir (דיאנה בחור-ניר), "השרים: בול ליחסים עם גרמניה? רק עם שואה." Ynet, 5 January 2005.

¹⁹ Mati Golan (מתי גולן), "הטלאי והבול." Globes, 24 December 2004.

²⁰ Judy Siegel, "Survivors upset by German-Israeli stamp." Jerusalem Post, 22 December 2004.

²¹ "הנפקת בול לציון 40 שנה לכינון יחסים דיפלומטים עם גרמניה - עדכון החלטה." Knesset.gov.il, 27 January 2005.

²² Ehud Ben Ezer (אהוד בן עזר), "האם אפשר לקרוא לכך הישג?" חדשות בן עזר, 9 February 2006

²³ "Rumanian Postal Authorities Reject Letters Stamped 'Let My People Go'." Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 23 April 1972