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<h1 id="reader-title">Google Sparks Outrage by Abolishing
Palestine on Maps</h1>
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<p>August 8, 2016<br>
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<p>Journalists and activists have excoriated Google for
wiping Palestine completely off its map app, depicting
the entire occupied Palestinian territories as part of
the state of Israel. </p>
<p>The Palestinian Journalists’ Forum initiated an online
campaign to pressure the internet giant to reconsider
its stance. The organization accused Google of being
“part of the Israeli scheme to establish its name as a
legitimate state for generations to come and abolish
Palestine once and for all.” </p>
<p>“The move is also designed to falsify history, and
geography as well as the Palestinian people’s right to
their homeland, and a failed attempt to tamper with the
memory of Palestinians and Arabs as well as the world,”
the statement continued. </p>
<p>In response, critics on Twitter have used the hashtag
#BoycottGoogle to condemn the company. A petition on
Change.org urging Google to put Palestine back on the
map has garnered 147,402 signatures as of Monday, just
shy of its 150,000 goal. </p>
<p>“The omission of Palestine is a grievous insult to the
people of Palestine and undermines the efforts of the
millions of people who are involved in the campaign to
secure Palestinian independence and freedom from Israeli
occupation and oppression,” reads the petition. </p>
<p>“Whether intentionally or otherwise, Google is making
itself complicit in the Israeli government's ethnic
cleansing of Palestine,” it continues. </p>
<p>In 2013, hackers replaced the homepage on Google’s
local domain in Palestine with a message calling for the
company to remove the name Israel from its map app and
replace it with Palestine, arguing that the state of
Israel is illegal. </p>
<p>Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948,
which forcibly displaced more than 750,000 Palestinians,
Israel has further shrunk Palestinian territories by
seizing vast swaths of land. Israel has expanded illegal
settlements on tens of thousands of hectares since
occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. </p>
<p>The United Nations recognizes the state of Palestine
with the status of a non-member observer state. </p>
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Freedom Archives
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San Francisco, CA 94110
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