If you ignore something, does it go away?
Apparently book publisher HarperCollins thinks so, given a recent revelation about maps it sells in the Middle East.
According to a story published December 31 in The Telegraph (U.K.), HarperCollins, one of the so-called “Big Five” in English-language publishing houses, “sells English-language atlases to schools in the Middle East that omit Israel.”
The cartographers at HarperCollins show the borders of Syria and Jordan extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Despite deleting Israel, the publisher’s maps do mark the West Bank, however.
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“The publication of this atlas will confirm Israel’s belief that there exists a hostility towards their country from parts of the Arab world. It will not help to build up a spirit of trust leading to peaceful co-existence,” said Bishop Declan Lang, the chairman of the Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs, as quoted in the Telegraph story.
HarperCollins responded to the criticism by pointing out that including Israel on its maps sold in the Middle East would be “unacceptable” to their mostly Muslim customers in the Arab world.
In other words, when it comes to pleasing Muslims, HarperCollins prefer to sacrifice accuracy (and reality) in favor of “local preferences” and prejudices when it comes to printing maps.
The Telegraph reports that one news organization claimed “it had discovered the customs officers in one unnamed Gulf country only permitting the import of school atlases once Israel had been deleted by hand.”
It would seem that deleting Israel from a map would only serve to surreptitiously support the goal of many in the Gulf region to erase Israel from existence in reality, as well as on paper.
After the sales became public, HarperCollins issued the following statement, as quoted in the Telegraph story:
HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas. This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises [sic] for this omission and for any offence [sic] caused.
It will be interesting to see if such a squishy apology will be sufficient to prevent the powerful and typically Republican pro-Israel lobby from boycotting HarperCollins and its corporate parent: News Corp, the company behind the Fox News Channel.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton.
