Google Earth and the Campaign to Wipe Israel Off the Virtual Map

From the Institute for Contemporary Affairs/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.

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. The concept of "replacement geography" replaces the historical connection of one people to the land with a connection between another people and the land.

The inclusion of virtual Palestine, superimposed on Israel in the core layer of Google Earth, is an example of replacement geography advanced by technology.

Those wishing to explore Israel in Google Earth are immediately taken to a politically motivated narrative unrelated to their quest. Google should remove the narrative and treat Israel as it treats every other country on the globe.

The core layer of Google Earth should be ideology free and not serve as a platform for indoctrination or a campaign to wipe Israel off the virtual map.

Google's latest anti-Jewish outrage

Excerpted from WND:

Is there an anti-Semitic programming troublemaker at Google? Is some nitwit just making ghastly and inappropriate decisions about search suggestions? Or is the whole multi-gazillion- dollar business running on auto-pilot?

Those were some of the questions going through the minds of the search giant's users today as they discovered a query for "Yiddish" images suggested "Also try zyklon b" – the insidious gas used to kill Jews in Nazi death camps.

Spokesmen for Google were not available in response to calls and e-mails from WND.

But the latest outrage from Google has some Internet users wondering what's up with a disturbing pattern of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli policies.

As WND reported last month, an Israeli town is suing Google after surprised municipal officials discovered Google Earth, the popular,user-driven satellite map, labels their city as stolen palestinian land."

[The label] is simply complete nonsense," Yossi Ben-Artzi, a history professor at Israel's Haifa University told Yediot Ahronot, Israel's leading daily.

"Kiryat Yam was built on sand dunes, and there wasn't any palestinian village in the area. The lands were bought in 1939 by the Gav Yam construction company."

The professor was responding to a criminal complaint filed by the northern Israeli coastal town of Kiryat Yam, which a Google Earth user mapped as stolen by Jews when Israel was founded in 1948.

The Google Earth user, identified as palestinian physician Thameen Darby, inserted a note on the map saying Kiryat Yam was built in 1948 at the location of a former Arab town called Ghawarina. Ghawarina, though, is widely thought to be about 10 miles south ofKiryat Yat, in an Arab village currently named Jisr el-Zarka.

Dramatic Drop in Terror Fatalities in 2007

From Dramatic Drop in Terror Fatalities in 2007:

13 Israelis were killed by Palestinians in 2007, down from 24 in 2006 and 50 in 2005, according to data released Monday by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet).

There was only one successful suicide bombing last year, down from six in 2006.

Palestinians fired 1,263 rockets and 1,511 mortar shells at Israel in 2007, compared with 1,722 rockets and 55 mortars in 2006.

Rocket attacks accounted for two fatalities, both in Sderot.

Let's see, what does that average out to? With 1,264 rockets lobbed over Israel in a year, that comes out to approximately 3.46 rockets being lobbed over Israel's homes and roofs PER DAY and 1,511 mortar shells that whiz and blast at all Israeli fixtures, with thanks to Google Earth which helps Muslims identify Jewish targets, that comes out to over 4 mortar shells PER DAY.

Name any other country that would tolerate daily bombings of its citizens.

You can't because no such country would put up with that crap.

Muslim hyper-violence is nourished by the weakness of the people of the European Union who fund the Palestinian Authority.

The whole notion that Arabs can live in peace under the Israeli flag but the Jews have no right to live at all under the Palestinian flag is simply pig-headed and is lost on the general public, I am afraid. The only reason why the IDF had to "occupy" Gaza in the first place was to protect the Jews that lived there from getting slaughtered. Let us never lose sight of that folks. It was never the injustice of the "Israeli Occupation" that caused us to leave Gaza but only the desire of the Arabs to slaughter us. We should not feel that we occupied another people; all we tried to do was live. Unfortunately, that required an Army and we had to make a tough choice and consolidate ourselves within borders that we could defend more easily with the resources we have. -- Rabbi Shaul Marshall Praver

Images that Shock

Google Earth helps Muslims kill Jews. From Images that Shock:

The Guardian has filmed rare scenes inside Hamas-controlled Gaza - Hamas beating up Fatah dissenters, Palestinian doctors forced by their Fatah paymasters to go on strike or forfeit their salaries, the militants who log on to Google Earth to search for Israeli targets for their Kassam rockets. What these films show is not a Gazan population turning against the gunmen who took the enclave over by force in June, but its opposite - the hatred that Mahmoud Abbas is incurring among his own people.

Expectations for the forthcoming peace conference in Annapolis are rapidly being lowered. It may now be put back to December. The star guest, Saudi Arabia, looks less, not more, likely to turn up.

Online, the shadow of Auschwitz

From Christopher Wolf, chair of the International Network Against Cyber-Hate and of the Internet Task Force of the Anti-Defamation League, is a partner in the Washington office of Proskauer Rose LLP.:

Human rights experts from around the world gathered in Poland recently in a bid to counter
the misuse of the Internet by hate groups. Sitting in a Warsaw conference room, the group viewed the latest online content produced by neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic hate groups, all reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda seen in that city more than 60 years ago.

Gone are the days when hate groups met in dingy rooms. Now, the Internet is the platform of choice for fringe groups that want to look mainstream. And as the promoters of intolerance and hate well know, on the Internet, video is king.

In Poland, the experts on Internet hate speech viewed a kind of "hate film festival" - slickly produced videos promoting white power and demonizing Jews, blacks, gays and other minorities, all available online. The music videos and film were Hollywood quality. A kid looking at what effectively are recruitment ads to join the intolerance movement would be impressed with the production values.

Today, the platform of choice for distribution of online videos is YouTube, which Google recently agreed to purchase for $1.65 billion. YouTube has capitalized on the advent of broadband Internet connections to make it a simple proposition to upload and share videos. Unsurprisingly, there has been a surge in hate videos posted online recently.

One likewise would expect a proliferation of pornographic videos on YouTube. But the YouTube terms of service make it clear that pornographic offerings are not allowed. As a result, and through the obvious attention of the YouTube managers, smutty videos are not to be found on the service.

The YouTube terms of service also prohibit "harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive" content. Citing the prohibitions in the terms of service, human rights monitors have brought hate videos to the attention of YouTube, and some videos have disappeared. But the presence of many others shows that the current management of YouTube makes the elimination of hateful content a low priority.

The folks at Google have been far more sensitive about the presence of hate speech on the Internet. When the Anti-Defamation League pointed out that the search term "Jew" produced a
virulently anti-Semitic site as a highly ranked search listing, Google volunteered to alert users to the fact that the listed site was in fact a hate site. And executives of Google have reached out to groups like the league to explore ways to counter online hate speech, and have even attended conferences on the subject.

While the First Amendment permits a wide range of speech in America, including hate speech, private companies do not have to allow their platforms to be used for distribution of such content. That is why activists fighting online hate take heart from terms of service that set standards. So far, it appears that Google takes such standards seriously. Let's hope that if
the Google/YouTube deal goes through, enforcement of the prohibition against hate speech becomes a real priority on the online video service.

We know too well what happens when citizens - including corporate citizens - fail to act
when hate speech proliferates. A searing reminder was provided to some of the people attending the Warsaw conference on Internet hate speech, who concluded their visit to Poland with a trip to Auschwitz.

Before walking to the crematoria at the concentration camp, visitors were invited to a screening of an orientation film containing footage from the days after the camp was liberated. The images are predictably horrific and the film makes the point that the murder of six million was the culmination of a regime of prejudice and hate.

For the people viewing the film, and the camp, the experience was painful but the lesson was profound: Expressions of hate and intolerance can lead to unimaginable acts of inhumanity.

Sex and Taboos in the Islamic World

Sex is a taboo in conservative Islamic countries. Young, unmarried couples are forced to seek out secret erotic oases. Books and play that are devoted to the all too human topic of sex incur the wrath of conservative religious officials and are promptly banned. Via Spiegel International:

The Internet is a refuge for hidden desires, even though it offers only virtual relief. Google Trends, a new service offered by the search engine, provides a way to demonstrate how difficult it is to banish forbidden yearnings from the heads of Muslims. By entering the term "sex" into Google Trends, one obtains a ranked list of cities, countries and languages in which the term was entered most frequently. According to Google Trends, the Pakistanis search for "sex" most often, followed by the Egyptians. Iran and Morocco are in fourth and fifth, Indonesia is in seventh and Saudi Arabia in eighth place. The top city for "sex" searches is Cairo. When the terms "boy sex" or "man boy sex" are entered (many Internet filters catch the word "gay"), Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the first four countries listed.

Google to Open R&D Center in Israel

From Google to Open R&D Center in Israel:

Internet search giant Google will open a research and development center in the Israeli city of Haifa in 2006, the company announced Tuesday.

"As a country renowned for its thriving economy and passion for new technologies, Israel is home to many outstanding computer scientists and engineers and Google is looking to establish long partnerships with institutes and universities."

"Google is also continuing to look at other locations in Israel for future engineering centers," the company said.

Terrorist Propaganda Outlet?

The Internet giant Google will give news agency status to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), according to an anonymous source at Google. If true, the ISM-an affiliate of the anarchist/communist wing of the PLO would be on par with professional news services such as CNN, Fox, and Associated Press. In addition, the Palestinian Authority has announced through its WAFA news agency that the ISM will be given an official license as a separate news agency, according it the same media status as the news giants.

It is not for balanced news coverage that the ISM is known. Although styling itself as a “peace group,” the ISM is in fact a vigorously anti-Israel group, notorious for bringing anti-Israel activists from around the world to the Holy Land. By its own admission, the ISM has plainclothes Palestinian “handlers” guiding ISM activities against anti-terror operations in the West Bank and Gaza, including providing cover for stone throwers. (An Ethiopian Jewish-Israeli soldier was killed in a stone throwing incident just three weeks ago, and another Israeli soldier lost an eye.) The ISM’s ill-concealed mission, meanwhile, is to provide cover for Palestinian terrorist activities while frustrating the anti-terror operations of the Israeli army.

Read the rest of this article, here.

If you'd like to contact Google News, email them at source-suggestions@google.com. For Reuters write editor.reuters@reuters.com. If you would like to help stop the ISM, email them at stoptheISM@att.net.