New York City – Representative Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn and Queens) today released the following statement commending 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.”

Google Earth is an online computer program with a core user base of 400 million people, up from 200 million since June 2007. The program allows users to view satellite images of the globe, zoom into 3-D pictures of a specific region or view specific buildings in towns and cities around the globe.

Previously the program automatically displayed content that users posted about a location. Some individuals used this feature as a platform to disseminate inaccurate and inflammatory content about Israel.

Rep. Weiner said, “Google has removed any subjective accounts of history depicted in the region. That’s the kind of responsible corporate behavior we have come to expect from Google, and I commend them for treating Israel the same as they treat other countries in the program.”

(Dov Gordon – YWN NYC)