Globe scrapped over Israel-Palestine error
Anti-Defamation Commission: 'Displacing Israel and replacing it with the yet-to-be-established state of Palestine is misleading, unacceptable and offensive'.
AUSTRALIA Post has pulled a world globe from sale at its outlets and issued an apology after The AJN alerted it to the fact that Israel was labelled as “Palestine”.
The globe, produced by the Discovery company, was bought at Australia Post’s Bentleigh East branch in Melbourne last Friday by a Jewish man as a birthday present for his grandson.
After noticing the error, he contacted the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) to express his shock and anger and has vowed to return the product.
In another blunder, the name Israel did appear on the globe but it was in Lebanon, above the region identified as Palestine. It was also printed across a border line, so all that is visible is “Isra”.
Speaking to The AJN on Tuesday, an Australia Post spokesperson said, “We are aware of this issue and have suspended the sale of this product and apologise for any offence caused.”
The spokesperson added that Australia Post “stocks a range of Discovery products in our stores, including this one, which was purchased in good faith”.
Stating, “Accuracy is of the utmost importance across all areas of the Discovery business,” a Discovery Australia spokesperson told The AJN, “We have immediately consulted our production partner of the 2-in-1 World Globe Light to rectify the geographical error relating to Israel. We apologise for any offence caused to our customers.”
Meanwhile, ThreeSixty Group, Discovery’s production partner for the product, blamed “a factory misprint error” for the mistake.
“As such we will be working with the factory to immediately correct this and to ensure that our teams more closely check this item for accuracy going forward,” a spokesperson said.
“We are currently working with our retail partners to immediately remove this item from shelves. We deeply regret that this mistake was not caught sooner.”
Describing the “deletion of an existing country” as “an outrage”, ADC chairman Dvir Abramovich called on Discovery Australia to “clarify whether this omission was … simply an oversight”.
“Displacing Israel and replacing it with the yet-to-be-established state of Palestine is misleading, unacceptable and offensive, and is an act of geographical erasure and disinformation,” Abramovich said.
“Imagine a globe that removed Australia and placed it in New Zealand? One has to wonder why Israel is not accorded the same respect given to other nations who are correctly labelled on this globe.”
He added, “Educational materials such as globes must adhere to the highest levels of accuracy, and young people in Australia deserve to have access to products that contain truthful facts and details rather than be exposed to objects which provide credibility to a narrative in which Israel has now been transplanted into another country’s land.”
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