• ’Pro-Israel’ now equals ’Greater Israel’ in Boston’s subway map wars -
    A Jewish news organization trumpeting its ’objective coverage’ of Israel is fueling the next round of the Israel-Palestine subway poster wars. Shame their map ’forgets’ that Gaza and the West Bank aren’t Israel.
    By Michael Felsen | Sep. 11, 2014 Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.615317

    The Middle East map wars have returned to the trains and buses of Boston.

    Controversy swirled last October over a pro-Palestinian ad campaign hosted by greater Boston’s transit system, featuring a series of four maps purporting to show, incrementally, the “Palestinian loss of land, 1946 to 2010,” and captioned “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the UN as refugees.”

    In recent weeks, Boston commuters have once again been asked to contemplate a map of Israel, this time by an avowedly pro-Israel news organization.

    In this go-around, the daily Metro newspaper, distributed gratis at subway stops around the city, included a half-page ad sponsored by the Jewish News Service. Captioned “Who is David? Who is Goliath?” the ad presents a map of North Africa and the Middle East. It depicts 16 countries stretching from Morocco to Iran in a tan color, with each of their populations listed. Wedged among them near the middle is one country in blue: Israel.

    The text complains that while there’s no lack of media coverage on Israel, “what’s lacking is objective coverage.” It asserts that “this tiny Jewish nation … generally receives inaccurate, harsh, even hostile coverage from the world’s press,” and that Jewish News Service “was created to correct that.”