For a really long period, Green has looked down on Orange, kicking it out of town whenever it needed somebody to blame for whatever was troubling Green. Orange would move to wherever, only to find the seemingly nice Green neighbor down the road required little provocation, none actually, to become un-nice.

But time passed and it seemed that maybe things would be almost okay. Unfortunately, when Orange and Green thought they were about to collaborate on progress toward real peace, someone would intervene, aggressively, and Orange and Green would be forced to return to their respective tribes without any resolution.

Eventually, Orange had this idea that maybe it would be good to have a place that was basically all Orange in terms of governance structure. They got in the ear of some Green personnel who had experience in drawing lines on maps for different countries, all of them a great distance away from where the decision-makers were having tea.

It’s true of course, for Orange to have its own abode, the land would have to be removed from ownership by Green. Whatever. Orange’s long and deep sense of its own history identified the appropriate spot, and with the support of enough Greens to do the transaction, it was done.

Unsurprisingly, those within the overall Green universe who were similar in their taste for tea but otherwise unmoved by the case for an independent Orange, were somewhat irritated.

Over the years since the creation of a home for Orange, there have been a bunch of attempts to hold hands and sing “We are the World,” but history has repeated itself: somebody would fire away and then it was back to the “us vs. them” dilemma which has plagued civilization, especially Green and Orange. The latter had the better of it when it came to physical interaction, even adding to the geographical scope of Orange, ticking off Green even more.

It has not helped matters that some in the Green community have been open, even in their textbooks, in advocating for the complete elimination of Orange, a strategy previously attempted elsewhere at great cost and with mixed results.

So it is fair to describe the Green-Orange relationship as somewhat on the tense side.

Finally it happened: some extreme Greens decided to act out, in rather obscene fashion I might add, with Orange of course being the target. In response, Orange’s leadership flipped, figuratively repeating the famous movie line: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any longer.”

Orange went after Green big-time. In the eyes of some, ultimately they did not appear overly concerned with collateral damage if Green persisted in putting its bad guys, women and children in the same location that Orange wanted to erase.

Alas, it would appear that the wounds are now so deep, the identification of moral high ground so tenuous, the ability to remember atrocities so ingrained that it will be a very long time, if ever, before Green and Orange will be able to sit and have a conversation steeped in mutual trust and good tea.

P.S. At various points in the saga of Green and Orange, but not recently (she has passed away), a certain Ms. Henrietta Szold was involved.

She was an interesting blend: bright; multilingual; a traditionalist –in her mind, but not in actuality –as to the role of a woman; a pragmatist: able to size up situations as to what needed to be done and how to make it happen; a poor public speaker yet able to speak effectively to an audience of those interested in the direction she was proposing; a disappointed non-Mother: her one chance at marriage and abiding love, in her mind anyway, thwarted by a professor who in retrospect regarded her as only an intelligent friend, finding his happiness in the arms of a much younger female.

Szold’s adherence to one branch of Orange, albeit an extremely important one, led her to believe that the language unique to Orange should be required of all those in leadership positions. She was fearful of a slippery slope, that those who differed with her philosophy would ultimately lose the sense of what made them Orange.

If she were alive to comment on the current horror show between Green and Orange, she might say, with tears falling down her cheek, that her early dream of bi-nationalism was no longer even worth mentioning. And she would be rallying nurses, doctors, and anybody else who could provide help for those injured in the latest chapter of the Green-Orange relationship.