Google Earth Cleans Up
It’s always nice to start the week with good news. Several months ago, Snapshots reported on how Google Earth became a platform for anti-Israel propaganda.
That situation has improved, according to Representative Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn and Queens). His Web site applauds
Google, Inc. for removing a series of anti-Israel depictions from its program.
Previously, Google Earth’s map of Israel automatically linked to subjective, ideologically driven summaries of history and included the following inaccuracies:
– In March 2008, the Gaza Strip was still listed as “Israeli-occupied,” despite Israel’s full withdrawal in 2005 and the military takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas in mid-2007.
– Kiryat Yam was wrongly claimed to be built on the Palestinian village of Ghawarina.
– Mt. Scopus and its Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem are placed within Jordanian territory prior to 1967, even though it was an area where Israel exercised control during that period, according to the 1949 Armistice Agreement.
The program also guided users to the “Palestine Remembered” site, which includes the following quotes:
– “The Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of Israeli terrorism (the chief aspect of which are the collective dispossesion and ethnic cleansing of 8.5 million Palestinians) for the past five decades.”
– “Palestine Remembered has been explicitly built to expose and uncover Israeli war crimes and to amplify the voices of the Palestinian refugees.”
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