The New York Times and the Washington Post have once again engaged in Israel bashing — spewing out fake maps and phony history about Israel, its origins and indeed its continued existence as the Jewish National Home — first articulated in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and confirmed in article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
The following maps:
- captioned: “Illustration by The New York Times/Photographs via Getty”
- appeared in: an article in the New York Times headlined “The myth of co-existence in Israel”
- was written by: Diana Buttu — identified as “a lawyer, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Palestinian citizen of Israel”
“that showed a shrinking map of Palestine, from the borders of the British mandate for Palestine in 1947 to areas that would be under Palestinian control after adoption of a recent [Trump — ed] peace plan.”.Kessler informed readers that:
“Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor of the [New York] Times, issued a statement saying “it was not meant to be a literal, factual map ... this was an illustration conveying a sense of shrinking space for Palestinians. It is art.”But obviously wanting to show up its arch competitor’s anti-Israel bias — Kessler then accurately pointed out:
“Still, a version of this map has been circulating for almost 20 years, supposedly showing how “Historic Palestine” had been taken over by Israel. As a technical matter, the map is a confusing mélange of images: it includes something that did not exist (Palestinian control over all the territory), something that did not happen (the proposed United Nations partition) and something odd (pre-1967 occupations by Jordan and Egypt are depicted as Palestinian-controlled).”Fake maps such as these have been reproduced all over the media, internet and in textbooks published by respected publishers for decades.
McGraw Hill Publishing — in 2016—withdrew from sale and trashed unsold copies of one such textbook - Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World — containing these following maps:
McGraw’s Spokesperson — Catherine Mathis — then stated:
“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”The New York Times should be ashamed of itself for publishing their similarly false and misleading maps.
Brownie points earned by the Washington Post in exposing the New York Times anti-Israel bias were however forfeited when Kessler continued “to summarize the two versions of whether there was a historic Palestine for readers who want to hear both sides of the story.”
The Pro-Palestinian version — according to Kessler - maintains:
“In the 18th century, the area saw the emergence of a new Palestine-based autonomous rule, spurred in part by the region’s commercial dynamism, especially its trade in cotton and grain. In effect, between the 1720s and 1775 under the ruler Zahir al-Umar, there was an independent Palestinian state — longer than the British mandate."Why publish such fabricated nonsense at all?
Palestine had then been part of the Ottoman Empire for 250 years and continued to remain so until the Allied and Central Powers made their decisions on its future at the 1920 San Remo Conference.
Ending the flow of false information published by “respectable publications” remains a continuing challenge for Israel to combat and finally defeat.
Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”—one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.
