Tiny Georgia, Big Israel?
Once again, The Washington Post has referred to a country as tiny (World News Brief “Huge Protests Launched Against Saakashvili,” [May 27]). Once again, that country is not Israel.
Georgia, described as “the tiny Caucasus nation” happens to be 3.5 times the land area of Israel. Georgia’s population is 5.4 million, Israel’s is about 7.2 million, of whom 5.6 million are Jews. Georgia comprises an area of 69,700 square kilometers (26,911 square miles), Israel comprises 20,770 square kilometers (8,016 square miles). The CIA World Fact Book describes the Black Sea nation of Georgia as slightly smaller than South Carolina, while it depicts Israel as slightly smaller than New Jersey.
Other tiny countries, according to Post foreign news coverage in the past three years, include the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan (47,000 square kilometers, “about half the size of Indiana,” in the CIA’s description (more than twice as large as Israel); Israel’s neighbor to the north, Lebanon (10,000 square kilometers, “about 0.7 times the size of Connecticut”); and Albania, Gambia, Luxembourg, and Malta.
Consistency and accuracy, would require The Post’s foreign news desk to describe Israel also as “tiny” from time to time. Failure to do so suggests a double standard, perhaps unconscious, in which Israel appears to loom larger in the Middle East than it actually does, and erroneously is assigned more responsibility for regional problems than it ideserves. — APG
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