Monday, January 31, 2005

VERIZON: THERE IS NO ISRAEL

SMS 'Palestine', but not Israel (HonestReporting)
Verizon Wireless is one of the largest mobile phone providers in the US. If you want to send a text message via Verizon, you go to this page, which lists the countries they serve and access codes.

'Palestine' is listed as a country (though it isn't), and guess which Mideast democracy on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean is not listed under 'I'?

Here's the page in 'map view', where it's even clearer that 'Palestine' -- including a flag! -- supplanted the State of Israel.

It seems Verizon has an arrangement with 'Palcell', a Palestinian cellular carrier, but none with any of the Israeli carriers. Curious...

Comments to Verizon Wireless: click here

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Their list obviously is not meant to indicate what countries they believe do or should exist, since it also does not include Austria, Luxembourg, or Saudi Arabia, to name just a few.

It looks like the list includes only those countries -- or political entities, if you will-- which contain companies with whom Verizon has a text-messaging agreement.

Before anyone jumps down their throat as being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, it would probably be more helpful to simply point out that the way they made the map and the list is insensitive, given the Arab world's desire to wipe out Israel, and would they please write "Palestinian Authority" instead of "Palestine," and make the flag not cover Israel as well? (The map is probably the same size as the maps for other countries too).

To me, this looks not like anti-Israelism, but just ignorance and thoughtlessness.