The GoogleEarth globe seen from afar
The GoogleEarth globe seen from afarIsrael News Photo: (courtesy of GoogleEarth promotional community )



Gaza was still listed as “Israeli-occupied,” despite Israel’s full withdrawal in 2005 and the military takeover of Gaza by Hamas in mid-2007.

Google Earth’s satellite map of Israel no longer links to subjective anti-Israel propaganda. After a moderate effort to bring this about, Democratic U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner of New York (Brooklyn and Queens) released a statement endorsing Google Inc.'s decision to do this.

Google Earth is an interactive program used by hundreds of millions of users around the world to access satellite photos of most of the world, even zoom in and see them in enough detail to find their house, backyard or car. The maps are not necessarily current, and depending on what part of the world one lived in then, one might recognize, by color and shape, the automobile s/he drove a decade or two ago, parked in their then-driveway, and that surprising little has changed.

Rep. Weiner included these examples of the anti-Israel links that had been found in Google Earth:

In March 2008,Gaza was still listed as “Israeli-occupied,” despite Israel’s full withdrawal in 2005 and the military takeover of Gaza by Hamas in mid-2007. Kiryat Yam was wrongly claimed to be built on the "Palestinian village of Ghawarina." Mt. Scopus and its Hebrew University campus in Jerusalem were classified as being located within Jordanian territory prior to 1967, even though it was an area where Israel exercised control during that period, according to the 1949 Armistice Agreement. 

The program also guided users to the “Palestine Remembered” site, which includes the following quotes:

“The Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of Israeli terrorism (the chief aspect of which are the collective dispossession and ethnic cleansing of 8.5 million Palestinians) for the past five decades.” “Palestine Remembered has been explicitly built to expose and uncover Israeli war crimes and to amplify the voices of the Palestinian refugees.”

Google Earth also offers layers of overlayed information which users can select to name streets, show shopping centers, and other items of interest.