From The Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs:
"Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained.Read the rest.
"Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation, and sites known to be ruins in 1946 are claimed to be villages destroyed in 1948. Arab villages which still exist today are listed as sites of destruction. The Google Earth initiative is not only creating a virtual Palestine, it is creating a falsification of history."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is, no doubt, chortling.
While this isn't a new story (I blogged about almost two years ago), it's an important one, and this well-footnoted report certainly backs up my contentions from then:
"So much of of what passes for "successful" efforts to combat anti-Israel reportage, propaganda, etc always seems to overlook "viral," bottom-up, grassroots activism, with [pro-Israel] proponents preferring top-down "dreiing with the machers," and, all too often coming out looking overwrought, and counterproductive.As I wrote in a related (satiric) post back then:
"Along with ubiquitous online tools like Wikipedia, Google Earth is a great example of how skewed coverage of Israel begins, from a nominally neutral source, that is then picked up by the ill-informed as "fact," and then spread at the speed of "enter."
