I recently ran across an article on JPost.com that inspired me to action. According to this article, he latest edition of the National Geographic's Traveller Magazine has published a "Travel Palestine" advertisement and the Advertising Standards Authority has been inundated with complaints that the advertisement attempts to "blot out" the existence of Israel. These complaints take issue with the fact that the advertisement locates Palestine between the Mediterranean coast and the Jordan river without mentioning Israel, and that it claims that areas under Israeli control, like parts of Hebron and East Jerusalem, are Palestinian destinations.
The article reads:
The Zionist Federation of the UK said the advert was misleading as it gives the “false impression” that Palestine is a country; that Jerusalem is part of Palestine, and that Palestine extends from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
“The ad would mislead tourists, since on traveling to territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority, they would not find the sites and facilities which the advertisement promotes,” the ZF said.
I decided to send the following e-mail to the ASA in defense of the Travel Palestine advertisement:
I'm sending this message in defense of an advertisement that has recently received several complaints. I'm very grateful that the National Geographic posted its Travel Palestine advertisement in this month's magazine because quite simply, Palestine needs to be traveled to. I just visited the West Bank and witnessed the Israeli government's attempt to erase Palestinian claims to the land with concrete walls, Hebrew highway signs, and Jewish-only settlements. The complaints say that Hebron isn't in Palestine because it's in Area C, under Israeli military control. Area C covers 60% of the West Bank. And Arab East Jerusalem is still "in dispute" because Arab residents are in the process of being evicted and surrounded by Israeli settlements. I commend National Geographic for inviting travelers to witness Palestinian culture for themselves, and telling the world that Palestine exists, in spite of Israeli efforts to make it disappear. I ask that you consider the implications of silencing this message in your investigation of this advertisement.
Thank you.
For anyone who wants to counter the complaints to the ASA and defend the Travel Palestine advertisement, I've included the following addresses:
The Advertising Standards Authority of Britain
National Geographic:
national geographic seems not to have gotten the memo. i believe it also recently published an article questioning the ‘kingdom of david’ mythological narrative promoted by israeli ‘archeologists’ and other useful idiots. i had seen a pbs documentary on the excavation of sites dating to the david era, archeologists remarking that the industrial revolution had begun in ancient israel. no sh@t. first i learn that israel invented irrigation, and now this historical tidbit of revisionism. what hasn’t israel gifted to western civilization?
RE: “what hasn’t israel gifted to western civilization?” – marc b.
MY SNARK: Tater Tots®!!! So far, Ore-Ida™ is still credited with* them.
* or blamed for
P.S. G_d bless Tots®!!! Long live Tater Tots®!!!
To balance the Nat Geo’s shocking ‘blotting out of Israel,’ and fulfilling the MSM’s self-appointed role as carny barker for Israel, today the WaPo ran an undisguised AP infomercial masquerading as a travel article (authored by Josh Lederman), about a Virgin Mary tour of Israel. ‘This way to the egress,’ urges Joshie over the tinnoy:
————
Lina Haddad, who directs Israel’s marketing of religious tourism, said the full-color booklet outlining the Virgin Mary itinerary, released Tuesday in English, will be translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.
In 2010, 69 percent of Israel’s almost 3.5 million tourists were Christians – mostly Catholics. Tourism professionals said Christian pilgrimages help Israel both economically and politically, because visitors tend to become supporters of Israel afterward.
Creating new travel products and marketing them specifically to Christians is the surest way to achieve that, said Elisa Leopold Moed, a Jew who founded Travelujah, a social network that promotes Christian tourism to Israel.
“The Christians feel passionate” about the sites so central to their faith, Moed said. “It’s burning inside of them.”
link to washingtonpost.com
————
Lawsy, Liza … somethin’ is burnin’ inside o’ me! But it might be diarrhea from them dodgy falafel carts …
Amazing that credulous Christians can tour Jerusalem and Bethlehem without noticing the plight of their own coreligionists –the Palestinian Christians being mercilessly squeezed by Israeli settlement expansion and occupation.
BDS needs to educate these well-intentioned religious tourists about the damage they’re doing.
‘Travelujah,’ my ass. More like ‘Bamboozalujah.’ Jesus wept … [tear gas?]
annie’s name for the country gets it right.
no mention of Israel?
prediction or prescience
whichever
by the end of the year!
I had responded to the JPost article and had already contacted the Press Office of the Advertising Standards Authority regarding the factual inaccuracies contained in that report.
I explained that Wikipedia has an article, “Palestine”, which says that the State of Israel is located there. It says that Palestine is located between the coast of the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
Article 28 of the Palestine Mandate and UN General Assembly resolution 181(II) provided for a peaceful change of governing regimes and required the successor(s) to assume responsibility for the public debts and treaty obligations of the government of Palestine. Israel sought to emancipate itself from the operation of the general principle of the laws of state succession by refusing to admit that it was a successor to Palestine. A conference was held at Tel Aviv in July 1949 between Israel and Great Britain for the purpose of settling disputed questions arising from the change of sovereignty. The views of the two delegations on the status of Israel were completely divergent. Israel claimed that it had been established by its own act of secession, and that it was in no sense a successor state to the debts and obligations of Palestine. See “The Law of State Succession”, Volume V of the Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, 1956, D.P. O’Connell author, Hersh Lauterpacht editor, pages 10-11, and 178. At the time Israel only occupied a portion of the former mandated territory under the terms of an armistice agreement.
The National Geographic Society headquarters are located in Washington D.C. In 1932, several countries, including the United States, Italy, and Spain legally recognized the Palestine Mandate as a separate foreign state within the boundaries that had been established by the UK government. See the decision of the District Court for the District of Columbia in Kletter v. Dulles”, cited in “International Law Reports, Volume 20″, Editors Elihu Lauterpacht, Hersch Lauterpacht, Cambridge UP, 1957, ISBN 0521463653, page 254. The boundaries of Mandate Palestine were located on the coast of the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
Note that the government and the Supreme Court of Palestine ruled that citizens of Transjordan were citizens of a foreign state. See “States as international persons”, H. Lauterpacht (Editor), “International Law Reports”,Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-521-46357-2, pages 15-17 An “Annex Regarding Palestine” contained in the Charter of The League of Arab States also recognized the existence of Palestine as a legal entity. Palestine is also represented in the organization as a member state.
In 1995, the US State Department published a Memorandum of Conversation between William Crawford Jr. and Mr. Shaul Bar-Haim from the Israeli Embassy (February 7, 1963) regarding Jerusalem. Bar-Haim said “The use of the term “Palestine” is historical fiction; it encourages the Palestine entity concept; its “revived usage enrages” individual Israelis”. Mr. Crawford replied “It is difficult to see how it “enrages” Israeli opinion. The practice is consistent with the fact that, ”in a de jure sense”, Jerusalem was part of Palestine and has not since become part of any other sovereignty. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. Xviii, Near East, United States. Dept. of State, G.P.O., 1995, ISBN 0160451590, page 341.
It does not appear that the status of Jerusalem is a justicable matter within the jurisdiction of the Courts of the United Kingdom. The position of the US and UK governments is that the legal status of Jerusalem, Palestine is a political question that can only be determined as part of a negotiated final settlement. In the past, the UK Foreign Office has stated that “In 1967, Israel occupied E Jerusalem, which we continue to consider is under illegal military occupation by Israel.” The current Position on Jerusalem says that “[Israeli] Settlements, as well as the evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem are illegal”
The majority of countries do recognize the State of Palestine as a legal entity and several have adopted the position that its boundaries are the territories of the former Mandate of Palestine which lay beyond the 1949 Israeli Armistice lines as of 4 June 1967.
I requested a response. The Press Office assured me these and any other available facts would be taken into consideration during the investigation.
Hey, easy on the felafel; there’s nothing better than ka’ak ou felafel and coffee to start the weekend. :-)
Actually, these days it would be pretty difficult for religious tourists to miss the suffering of their Palestinian brothers and sisters, particularly if going to Bethlehem. All tour buses buses enter through the infamous Gilo checkpoint, with the wall staring you in the face as you cross into the city. Once inside, one can’t help but notice how the wall truncates streets, abuts what would normally be lovely homes and yards, and isolates businesses, and there are any number of shuttered shops as you snake through the city on the way to the holy sites.
On the way back, it’s even worse, many buses will go right past the Intercontinental Hotel ( a really wonderful old structure) on the way to/from souvenir shops, and at the end of the block? A huge, gray, ugly wall, with the “prison door” for the bus to pass through. Of course, if any are unaware enough to try and cross back into Jerusalem on foot, they’ll get the full-on Border Police treatment; no humiliation spared.
It’s the same if one is touring Jerusalem; it’s hard not to notice the presence of the Border Police in and around the Old City, especially around holidays, settlers being escorted by armed guards as they traverse the Arab quarter, etc.
While some tourists are clearly at a loss on how to process this info, a significant number of the ones I have met have been shocked at the reality, and I’ll bet the word is spreading back home, slowly but surely.
Thanks, Morgan. I contacted Natl Geographic as you suggested.