Our last episode, “Frankly, My Deer,” was all about a clandestine operation to repatriate the Persian fallow deer during the dwindling days of the Iranian Shah’s regime. One of the main characters in that story was Major-General Avraham Yoffe, the so-called “Zionist Zorba,” who – back in the ‘60s – while serving as the Head of the IDF’s Northern Command, was also appointed to be the first Director-General of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Early on, he oversaw one of the most effective public service campaigns in the country’s history – namely the prohibition against picking wildflowers. And that reminded us of one of the very first stories we ever produced here at Israel Story. So here it is… Flower Power.
Black markets, propaganda, and … wildflowers
Act Transcript[car driving]
Mishy Harman (narration): This last weekend, a bunch of radio producers piled into a small silver Mazda, and drove off to the hills outside Ness Ziyyona. The star of the ride was threeyearold Eliana, the daughter of Yochai Maital, our senior producer. But the person who brought us on the trip was reporter Daniel Estrin (you’ll be hearing from him in just a moment). We were off to do some field reporting. Like, actual field reporting. In search of Israel’s national flower the Kalanit, or anemone.
Daniel Estrin: I checked the site this morning, and there’s a fresh report on, uh, anemones.
Yochai Maital: Which is exciting ‘cuz it’s like a little early for them, isn’t it?
Daniel Estrin: Yeah, these are like the very first anemones that are blooming.
Mishy Harman (narration): Every winter tens of thousands of Israelis do exactly what we were doing go out to the country to see carpets of floppy red anemones at the peak of their bloom. It’s still a bit early in the season, but if you’re a diehard flower fan, you can go online for live updates on flower sightings around the country. The sites have breaking news style tickers, and scrolling updates. That’s how Daniel heard about these ones. Anyway, we arrived…
Mishy Harman (narration): Took a few steps, and immediately began spotting little red flowers. Eliana was very excited.
Eliana Maital: Hineh Kalaniyot… 5:00 Ve’Ani Ra’itti Od Achat!
Daniel Estrin: 6.10 Wow these are gorgeous. This one is beautiful.
Yochai Maital: There’s quite a bit of Kalaniyot here actually.
Mishy Harman (narration): We weren’t alone: One woman with a big fancy camera was taking close up shots of the red beauties. A few people, I kid you not, had set up lawn chairs in front of a couple of flowers. Sophie Schor, one of our producers, ran into a big group of kids walking with their parents. She asked whether they were picking the flowers.
Kids: Lo…
Parent: We shouldn’t pick flowers. It is forbidden.
Kids: Asur liktof.
Mishy Harman (narration): “Oh no,” they all answer in chorus. Asur Liktof. You’re not allowed to pick.
Daniel Estrin (narration): Back in the old days, years ago, everyone in Israel picked wildflowers. Take one typical Israeli of that generation, 77yearold Israela Hargil.
Israela Hargil: Seventy seven and a half. Born ‘38, 1938. [laughs].
Daniel Estrin (narration): You can’t get much more Israeli than being called Israela. And when she was young, Israela was just like the next Israeli: She loved picking wildflowers. When she was seventeen, in 1955, she went on a fieldtrip with kids from her kibbutz.
Israela Hargil: At the time we were in the Galil, the northern part of Israel. And at dusk, we settled down, and I wandered around with a friend, and saw from a distance a beautiful field full of flowers, light purple flowers, quite tall… They were irises! And we started picking them up! Both of us! Huge bunches of these flowers. Very happy. Walking further and further. All of the sudden one of us looked around and saw a sign (quite a big sign) saying ‘Ha’Gvul Lefanecha’ – the border is in front of you.
Daniel Estrin (narration): The Syrian border.
Israela Hargil: We were behind the sign!
Daniel Estrin: You had actually crossed the border?
Tali Hargil: Yes, that’s what happened to pick the flowers.
Daniel Estrin (narration): That’s Israela’s daughter, Tali, sitting on the couch next to her mom.
Israela Hargil: You know how a kid gets to flowers. It is really enchanting. So we picked more and more. And there is a beautiful one, and there is a tall one. Further and further, until we saw that sign.
Daniel Estrin: You went into enemy territory to pick your flowers.
Tali Hargil: That’s it.
Israela Hargil: Right. That’s what happened.
Daniel Estrin (narration): Wildflowers meant a lot to Israela. As a little girl, back in Poland, she used to go flower picking with her parents. Then World War Two broke out. She survived the Holocaust hiding in a Polish family’s home, where she would take cover under the bed whenever visitors came by. Going out to pick flowers was out of the question, it was just way too dangerous. But at night the Polish family would let her go outside, to breathe some fresh air. And there, behind a fence and a gate, just out of reach, was a garden with flowers. She called it “The Enchanted Garden.” After the war ended, she moved to Israel where she could pick as many flowers as she liked. And picking flowers in Israel – felt symbolic. Not just to her. To her peers too. And also to Tali, her daughter.
Tali Hargil: You were in awe when you saw these colorful flowers. And it was an emblem or a symbol of… of the…
Israela Hargil: Re… recreation of the…
Tali Hargil: Yeah. Of the state.
Israela Hargil: Rebirth.
Tali Hargil: Rebirth of the country of the State of Israel… I mean… a Jewish country. And it was kind of proof that things are going well, you know? Now I think it was a reflection of our state of mind, in a way. I remember mainly one morning, very early, I woked up Tali. She was four maybe five.
Tali Hargil: Five.
Israela Hargil: She didn’t want to get up it was too early. It was around 5 o’clock in the morning. But I said: “Talinka you must get up we are going out.” Well, she got up, we dressed. Why did I want her at that time to get up so early? Because I wanted her to see the sunrise. Well, we got up quickly and went out on a hill, and we sat their quietly watching the sunrise. And then we noticed that the whole hill was covered with wildflowers. White and bluish and of course greenery. Well, so we started, especially Tali, started picking up the flowers. She picked them up, and brought to me, and I was sitting there, and started wov…
Tali Hargil: Weaving. Weaving.
Israela Hargil: Weaving a crown. Now, I knew how to weave a crown from the early childhood in Poland. It means I took a long piece of grass, which was quite strong, and tied these flowers up, until we managed to have a wheel which will fit her little head.
Tali Hargil: And every birthday I had a crown like that.
Israela Hargil: Every birthday.
Tali Hargil: Every birthday.
Israela Hargil: Every birthday.
Tali Hargil: Every single birthday. A crown of wildflowers.
Daniel Estrin (narration): This was not just their private ritual. In the country’s early years, picking wildflowers was a national pastime. It was a way Israelis showed their love of the land. It reminded them of the flowers mentioned in the Bible. They would uproot the flowers to feel rooted to their homeland. Christian pilgrims were into wildflowers too. They would buy albums full of pressed petals as souvenirs from the Holy land. Benny First, who works at Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, has done a lot of research about this.
Benny First: Nobody thought that there is a problem. Nobody thought that, ‘hey guys! If all of us will keep on picking flowers, there might be no left here… flowers for the next generation. And there was no thinking about environmental protection or nature value’s protection. Nothing. Let’s pick as much as we can. There were songs about it and everybody said that people, even the government, promoted the Israeli education system, to do it more and more. There was a competition between primary schools, all over Israel for twenty years from the 1950s until the 1970s. Those who picked as much as they could, the most, the many many flowers that they could, they got a prize! From the Ministry of Education! It’s unbelievable.
Daniel Estrin (narration): But there was one man who did realize there was a problem. Uzi Paz.
[Hebrew]
Daniel Estrin (narration): He’s a wildflower expert. One of Israel’s top wildflower experts. He lives in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. When I showed up at his house I walked through a beautiful garden in the front yard. But inside there wasn’t a single vase of flowers. I asked his wife, half jokingly, if he ever brings her flowers. Absolutely not, she answered. Dead serious. Right after I arrived, Uzi whisked me into his office where his desktop computer is jampacked with flowers folders and subfolders and subsubfolders all full of photos of gorgeous fields of wildflowers, organized according to location.
Daniel Estrin (narration): Back in the 60s, Uzi helped found Israel’s Society for the Protection of Nature. Ha’Hevra Le’Haganat Ha’Teva, in Hebrew. And he likes to think of himself as the man who saved Israel’s wildflowers from extinction. Well, he together with a few other key people, he acknowledges. They realized that if people kept picking Israel’s flowers at the rate they were picking them – they would simply disappear. So they launched a campaign. The campaign to save Israel’s wildflowers. Step one: convince the government to make it illegal.
[Hebrew]
Daniel Estrin (narration): The way Uzi remembers that campaign sounds a lot like an episode of House of Cards– political wheeling and dealing to convince key lawmakers to support the legislation. He talks about sheepishly approaching Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s Minister of Agriculture, who – Uzi says – looked at him with his single eye and told him he was nuts to think the parliament, the Knesset, would ever outlaw flower picking. But then, just as Uzi was leaving his office with his tail between his legs, Dayan said: “OK, give it a try.” It was all very time sensitive: The Knesset was about to go on recess, and in those days if you didn’t pass legislation before the break, you had to start from scratch once the parliament adjourned. Plus, there was talk of new elections in the air, so Uzi was afraid it was now or never. He rushed to lobby the head of a key parliamentary committee who just happened to be an old friend of his. The man had a crappy car, so Uzi used to give him a lift to the Knesset. He says that helped seal the deal, and in August 1963, wildflower picking was made illegal. But given its popularity, a law was not going to be enough. So Uzi brought in the country’s leading advertising executives, and asked them to come up with their best ideas for a public service campaign. One suggested putting the message on matchboxes. Meh, Uzi thought. Another suggested advertisements at the movie theater before the film started. He didn’t like that much either. Then one day, on a trip to Haifa, Uzi noticed some posters the mayor had printed – telling people to protect the flowers of Haifa. That was it, he decided on the spot: Posters. He printed 30,000 colorful posters with sketches of protected wildflowers and a simple message: Protect the wildflowers. The posters were distributed all across the country. They were pretty and large, and people hung them everywhere: In government buildings, in health clinics, in banks… A classic propaganda campaign.
Benny First: Everywhere! In army bases, in postoffice branches, in schools, especially in schools. All over.
Daniel Estrin (narration): That’s Benny First again, from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
Benny First: It was a hit. It was… everybody… there was a black market even for those posters. People stole it from schools and from other places because it was very very popular. It was very nice. Yes!
Daniel Estrin: A black market?! What did they want to do with them?
Benny First: A black… Because the quantity of those posters was very limited… Every school, let’s say primary school or high school got only five posters to put at school. But kids, wanted more! So they stole it from the walls and brought it home!
Daniel Estrin (narration): Before long, everyone joined the party: The Israeli lottery printed lottery tickets with images of protected wildflowers. A gift manufacturer made a wildflowerthemed card game. Newspapers ran a weekly column called “Flower of the Week.” Environmentalists even complained to Naomi Shemer, Israel’s most famous songstress, about one of her tunes that was all about going out into the fields to pick flowers. So she changed the lyrics from, “one thousand cyclamen flowers every one gathered” to “one thousand cyclamen flowers every one counted.” And if that wasn’t enough, Shemer wrote another song – called ‘Waltz for the Protection of the Flora.’ Remember Israela and her daughter Tali from the beginning of the story? This song was sort of the soundtrack to Tali’s childhood.
Tali Hargil: That I remember a lot, you know, on the radio a lot, and we used to sing the song, you know, when we were in the scouts, and going on trips, on the bus. We used to sing the song, and it said, you know, explicitly: You can’t pick that flower. You can’t pick that flower. Nananana… Don’t remember the words exactly…. nanana “she’asur liktof.” You’re not allowed to pick. Nanana… And everybody loved that song.
Israela Hargil: Yeah!
Benny First: All these things just to show you how popular was these things. Suddenly the Israelis in the 1960s discovered their wildflowers. They understood that it’s better for them to enjoy the flowers on the posters and keep them in the ground. Not in their vase, not in at home, and not picking them.
Daniel Estrin (narration): It’s astonishing just how successful this campaign was. In the decades since, there have been plenty of public service campaigns in Israel to get people to change their behavior. There are radio ads every single hour telling Israelis to drive safely. And still, they don’t. There have been campaigns to get people to stop littering so much, to stop smoking so much. Israelis still litter. Israelis still smoke. But no one picks wildflowers.
Daniel Estrin: Why was this campaign so successful when so many other campaigns in Israel have not been as successful?
Benny First: Ummm… That’s the best question I think… Well, we need to understand, the wildflower campaign, was very unique. It was the first one.
Daniel Estrin (narration): Up until the early 60s and the wildflower campaign, all the other campaigns were about the military join the navy, join the air force. This was the first major public campaign asking Israelis to change their habits.
Benny First: And you know for primary things, rishoni, something which is in the beginning, has its own power. And one more thing we need to say, it’s the basic thing that the campaign asked from the Israeli is, was very simple. It says, you like the flowers? Great! Keep on liking them! And love them, but just do it in a different way. It’s amazing. It’s an iconic campaign. I must say. It changed the Israeli behavior and the Israeli ethics of people to their land.
Yochai Maital: Oh that’s just a small one, right?
Eliana Maital: Adain lo niftach.
Yochai Maital: Yeah, it’s just tiny. A baby baby kalanit.
Daniel Estrin (narration): Out on our field trip near Nes Ziyyona, three-year-old Eliana already knows the drill.
Yochai Maital: She’ani ektof ota?
Eliana Maital: Lo!
Yochai Maital: Lo marshim liktof?
Eliana Maital: Nachon!
Yochai Maital: Nachon, lo marshim…
Daniel Estrin (narration): “Should we pick it?” Yochai asks her. And Eliana, replies: “No, you’re not allowed to pick.” It’s been more than half-acentury since Israel outlawed wildflower picking. Today, for, Eliana, for everyone here really, you just don’t do it.
