Commentary Magazine..
05 January '15..
Much is said here and elsewhere about Palestinian incitement and how the Arab world’s rejection of Jewish rights, if not Jewish existence altogether, has poisoned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much is also written about the international community’s toleration of Arab anti-Semitism, and the many forms it takes. But we should single out for special attention those who seek to make a buck off this deadly hate, as a major publishing house was recently caught doing.
The Washington Post highlighted the indefensible actions of HarperCollins when the company was discovered to have been publishing an atlas for schools in the Arab world whose maps did not include Israel. HarperCollins literally wiped Israel off its maps. The Post explains:
For months, publishing giant HarperCollins has been selling an atlas it says was “developed specifically for schools in the Middle East.” It trumpets the work as providing students an “in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”
Nice goals. But there’s one problem: Israel is missing.
There’s Syria. There’s Jordan. There’s Gaza. But no mention of Israel. The story was first reported by a Catholic publication, the Tablet.
How and why did this happen? They knew their audience:
Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”
Yes, “local preferences.” The Jewish people just keep ending up on the wrong side of “local preferences.” Of course, the Arab world teaches its children such hateful propaganda because Israel’s enemies hope to make HarperCollins’s maps one day reflect reality. How does HarperCollins feel about profiting from being used as a marginal tool in a genocidal quest? They’re sorry! Really, really sorry:
“HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas,” HarperCollins UK said on its Facebook page. “This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologizes for this omission and for any offense it caused.”
Wiping Israel off the map gets the classic Facebook apology. But hey, no worries. Happens all the time. You have to make a living somehow, right?
To the Washington Post’s great credit, they wouldn’t let HarperCollins off the hook just yet. The publishing house, the Post noted, was not sorry to have done what it did: it wasn’t a mistake, but rather policy. HarperCollins was sorry, oh so sorry, to have been caught.
As the Post’s education writer pointed out in a follow-up story:
Sorry? Given that the omission was a deliberate decision to appease customers who wish Israel didn’t exist, one thing we can be pretty sure of is that HarperCollins is sorry that somebody noticed the omission outside the countries where these maps were welcome.
Those are strong words, and they are entirely correct. Once again, good for the Post. We should all be able to agree that genocide is bad. Go stand in the corner, HarperCollins.
Of course there’s a larger point here, and since this is about education, it’s especially pertinent. And the Post didn’t miss that point either: “But it isn’t the only publishing company that wiped Israel off the map. Scholastic Inc., the large children’s book publisher, did the same thing in books for kids in 2013.” Not to mention what goes on in Gaza:
In any case, those aren’t the only maps and books that omit Israel. Many textbooks in Mideast countries don’t show Israel in maps, and this November 2013 story in the New York Times reported that Hamas, the movement that controls the Gaza Strip, was introducing new textbooks that would be used “as part of a broader push to infuse the next generation with its militant ideology” and that don’t recognize modern Israel. So much for geographic accuracy.
I don’t think there are many in the Middle East outside Israel who are all that concerned about “geographic accuracy.” And for those who are, my guess is that geographic accuracy is trumped pretty easily by “local preferences” every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
But we can and should zoom out even more. As I wrote in November, UNRWA–the UN agency dedicated to keeping Palestinians living like refugees in perpetuity–has been embroiled in its own scandals with revelations that it employs as educators and directors anti-Semites who openly root for the murder of Jews. UNRWA then does its part to facilitate that by somehow ending up housing Hamas weapons in its schools. (Surely some kind of administrative oversight.)
Arab children are being educated to hate Jews not only by their own warped state propaganda machines but by the United Nations and Western textbook publishers. It’s true that HarperCollins didn’t invent this market for anti-Jewish capitulation. And obviously the company plays a very minor role in all this. But as long as such hate finds ready suppliers in the mainstream West, none of this will change.
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/01/05/wiping-israel-off-map-just-price-business-middle-east/
Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.
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