British Agency Rules Against Israel's Attempt To Wipe Palestine Off The Map

16/07/2009

IMEMC - After over 1,000 people with Jews for Justice and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK sent complaints, the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against allowing the Israeli Tourism Ministry to distribute maps in the UK that showed no West Bank, Gaza or Golan Heights, but instead put “Israel” in each of these occupied territories.

In a decision reached on Wednesday July 15th, the ASA ruled that the maps portraying the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank and Gaza and the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights as being part of Israel violated a regulation requiring truth in advertising.

The maps were part of an advertising campaign called “Experience Israel”, created by the Israeli Tourism Ministry to try to encourage tourism and Jewish immigration to Israel. The campaign included posters with the maps that were plastered throughout the British Underground subway system beginning in May.

According to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain, the ASA received a total of 441 complaints, which it considered in its ruling. A further 600 complaints were received by Transport for London.

The maps are considered inaccurate, and are an example of what cartographers call “cartographic aggression”, in which a nation redefines its borders on the maps it prints, in order to expand its territory or gain political pressure in land disputes.

Israel, which has never defined its borders since its creation in 1948, illegally occupied the three territories in question beginning in 1967. Israel continues to maintain an illegal military occupation and settlements in the Golan Heights, despite that territory's recognition by the entire international community (save the US) as Syrian land. The Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, continues until today with the continuous disenfranchisement of the indigenous Palestinian population and the rapid expansion of Israeli settlements on illegally-seized land.

This is the second time that the Israeli Tourism Ministry has been cited by the ASA for advertising inaccurate maps of Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said in a statement released Wednesday, "At a time when Palestinian history, culture and memory are all under threat of extinction, this ruling by the ASA is welcome and significant. It demonstrates an awareness amongst a wider public, not just campaigners, that Palestine does exist and that it is struggling against an unjust and illegal occupation. This crude attempt by the Israeli tourist office to wipe Palestine off the map has rightfully failed. It was particularly sickening to see Gaza being included on a tourist map of Israel, when it is suffocating under Israel’s brutal blockade."