Goodness knows I understand marketing and the pressures of meeting sales quotas. Whether you are in the GPS software business or market No. 2 pencils in yellow and green, there are pressures. Suppose you were intentionally shipping software that had a glitch where it would always route the driver to side-streets 
and never to parkways? Or maybe you marketed green pencils that you knew were really blue? Silly examples perhaps, but in both cases, people would say you were being unethical. Suppose you were in the map business. A map is a map, right? Even if we were competitors, I would imagine if we sold maps of Texas, both of our maps would show the Rio Grande. Apparently, this is not always the case.
In an article appearing in the online edition of the Washington Post (January 2, 2015) entitled: ‘HarperCollins omits Israel from maps for Mideast schools, citing ‘local preferences,’ writer Terrence McCoy tells us:
“For months, publishing giant HarperCollins has been selling an atlas it says was ‘developed specifically for schools in the Middle East.’ It trumpets the work as providing students an ‘in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.’ Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”
The problem with this “in-depth coverage,” is that they decided to omit the country of Israel. Every other country is there, but tiny Israel seems to have been swallowed by the Mediterranean. According to the article:
“HarperCollins was backtracking fast. ‘HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas,’ HarperCollins UK said on its Facebook page. ‘This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologizes for this omission and for any offense it caused.’
It apparently caused quite a bit. On Amazon, the atlas has 39 reviews. Every reviewer gave it one star.”
In case you are willing to concede that maybe Israel was accidentally omitted because the country is so small, let me please point out that the West Bank was included, a land-locked area within the Israeli boundaries.
It is one thing for the country of Israel to be despised by its Arab neighbors; it is quite another thing for an international publisher to fan the flames by selling an intentionally flawed product:
“Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet [a major Catholic magazine] that it would have been ‘unacceptable’ to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy ‘local preferences.’”
Credibility is at stake
Going back to an example I cited above, suppose I sold my GPS software around the world, and realizing my error after a partial, ethical breakthrough, I pulled the defective software from everywhere except one country. I kept shipping the defective product to this one country because I “didn’t like those people.” Therefore, everyone in that country using my company’s software would routinely get lost or delayed.
Again, I know it’s a silly example, but you can see where I am going.
HarperCollins decided that it would intentionally sell a defective map in order to cater to the politics of a certain segment of its customers. In doing so, HarperCollins risked its integrity, the accuracy of its products and its sense of ethics. They intentionally marketed a flawed product. Is this any different than General Motors intentionally selling vehicles with a flawed part?
I am not the kind of person to ever, ever use terms such as racism and anti-Semitism lightly. They are harsh terms and harsh descriptors that should be handled with great care. They are lightening rod issues yet, as I note that this is the new year of 2015, that the country of Israel has just turned 67 years old. It would appear that HarperCollins, bowing to the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic (yes, I am aware that there are many Semitic peoples, but let’s get real), omitted Israel to make more money.
Many, many countries widely recognized, and appearing in HarperCollins maps are about the same age or even younger. For example, it is no secret that India and Pakistan have – at best – a contentious relationship; yet, Pakistan (declared an independent nation about a year before Israel), appears in maps. Even in maps sold to the country of India. Eritrea is now independent from Ethiopia and was made a new country only in 1993. The two countries did not part amicably. Yet, Eritrea appears in HarperCollins maps. So what gives?
What gives is ethical expediency. What gives is a company that decided to trade its integrity for a few bucks.
I had better check a HarperCollins map of Texas; for all I know, the Rio Grande has been deleted and replaced with the Red Sea.
