In 1944, the Union of Arab Orthodox Clubs (UAOC) set out to adopt a logo for the club's various publications. Nearly a dozen options were considered, all including a gold cross and a black, green, red and white Palestinian flag. The artist who drafted the samples must have been shocked by the ensuing debate in which the majority of Union committee members rejected the cross logo ‘under the pretext that [if] an emblem with a symbol of the cross is adopted … [their] Arab Muslims brothers [would] become angry’. Jiryis Hanna Butrus of Ramallah wrote to the Union headquarters sharing his concern over this development. Citing a local anecdote about a Christian who raised a cross during a public gathering, he concluded that the man ‘wasn't paid any notice of disgust from our Muslim brother, rather the opposite: they gave him all respect’. The UAOC was, after all, an umbrella organisation representing Arab Orthodox clubs throughout Palestine and, as such, was a specifically communal group.