Google Falsely Accused of Wiping Palestine off Its Maps

Earlier this month, Google was accused of committing a major social justice faux pas in removing Palestine from Google Maps. The charge against the Silicon Valley company was leveled by a group of Gaza City journalists, who called on Google to revoke its deletion and apologize to the Palestinian People, according to The Washington Post.

The only issue with the allegation is that Google had not deleted Palestine from its maps because Palestine had never been labeled as such in the first place– a fact amply demonstrated by the existence of a five-month-old Change.org petition calling on Google to put Palestine on its maps.

In a statement to Engadget, however, a Google spokesperson did admit to a glitch that caused a change in the way the region was labeled: “There has never been a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps, however we discovered a bug that removed the labels for ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip.’ We’re working quickly to bring these labels back to the area.” As of now, the Gaza Strip label is back on Google Maps.

This has done nothing to dim the zeal of tens of thousands on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media who have rallied around the stirring declaration that #PalestineisHere. While the dramatic charge that Google has imperiously and unilaterally wiped a nation off the map may be misplaced and groundless, the call to recognize Palestine as a nation is one that is both longstanding and controversial.

Google currently refers to Palestine as a de jure sovereign state on Google Maps, following the lead of the United Nations. While its diplomatic attempt to circumvent a sticky political controversy may have failed, unjustly or not, it also goes to show how much power Google Maps, which is used more than a billion times a week according to The Washington Post, has to influence the way in which the world is perceived. Google’s current woes serve as a reminder that cartography can be a politically fraught and significant endeavor. Wiping countries off the map is the exclusive preserve of both militaristic nation-states and cartographers, it seems.