At the start of the 2015-16 academic year, students attending elementary schools in Paris were handed a map of Europe and certain parts of the Middle East that omitted Israel, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey, reports Jssnews.com.
While the latter four countries were not mentioned at all, Israel was labelled as “Palestine.”
Following complaints from parents, JTA reports that the City of Paris said that the omission was not intentional and a result of “a simple production error.”
The city released an official statement to respond to inquiries by media outlets and disgruntled parents regarding the map, which was reportedly distributed by the League Against Cancer.
“The borders of the map divide incorrectly the geographic area occupied by Israel and Palestine,” reads the statement. “The city affirms that this constitutes no adoption of any political stance.”
The city also noted that a calendar distributed to students which lists an additional international map correctly labels Israel and the Palestinian territories.
This is not the first time Israel has been left out of international maps. In 2013, Scholastic apologized after omitting Israel from a map of the Middle East in the popular children’s book,Thea Stilton and the Blue Scarab Hunt.
In 2014, HarperCollins posted to a sincere apology on its Facebook page for its exclusion of Israel on maps "developed specifically for schools in the Middle East."
According to the Washington Post, this was a “deliberate decision” by HarperCollins, making it all the more offensive.
Earlier this year, Air France announced it “deeply regrets” technical problems that led to the absence of both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from in-flight maps that displayed Gaza and the West Bank.
