Publisher HarperCollins Apologizes for Middle East Atlas that Wiped Israel off the Map

HarperCollins, one of the world’s leading publishing companies, has apologized for removing Israel from its Middle East Atlas, which is sold to English-speaking schools in the Arab Gulf, after receiving angry criticism from Jewish and Christian leaders.

“Shame on HarperCollins,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, told The Algemeiner, prior to the release of a statement from the publisher which announced that the atlas “has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.”

As the British Christian newspaper The Tablet reported on Wednesday, the atlases “depict Jordan and Syria extending all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.” A spokesman for Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the paper that including Israel would have been “unacceptable” to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated “local preferences.” The Tablet also reported that a customs officer in one Gulf nation would only permit the atlases to reach their intended recipient “only once Israel had been struck out by hand.”

Bishop Declan Lang, the chairman of the Department of International Affairs Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, told The Tablet that the deliberate omitting of Israel from the map would harm peace efforts on the Middle East. (Read more about publisher HarperCollins apologizes for map taking Israel off HERE)

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