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You may be aware that Google recently launched
GoogleEarth ( http://earth.google.com/ ) a free
satellite imagery program that enables web users to locate aerial views of
places all over the globe. It's interesting to use and undoubtedly a good
learning tool. However...here's what I wrote to the GoogleEarth people after my
first use of the program tonight:
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When I enter "Palestine", GoogleEarth finds a spot
in the ocean NW of West Timor. "Palestinian Territories" (or any variant
thereof) = "not found". "West Bank" = "not found". In other words, there appears
to be no listing for Palestine in any form.
"Jericho" = "not found". After careful searching, I
found Jericho (in the West Bank) listed under its Hebrew name, "Ariha". But
typing in "Ariha", with or without any additional specifier (eg. "Israel", "West
Bank", etc.) = "not found". Listing Palestinian cities under Hebrew names is not
only useless for the vast majority of users, it is offensive.
In addition, GoogleEarth uses very uncommon
spellings for Arabic place names in Palestine (though not in other countries,
i.e. Iraq, Saudi Arabia). For instance: "Bayt Furik" (as listed by Google Earth)
returns 125 hits in Google, while "Beit Furik" returns 22,900. "Nabulus" (as
listed by Google Earth) returns 11,900 hits, while "Nablus" returns 2,140,000.
Please correct your data to eliminate Hebrew spellings for Palestinian places
and adopt a popular standard for Arabic transliteration, so people can find what
they're looking for. Thank you.
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Other members may want to check this out and
(no doubt) find other instances of "Israelization" and "encryption" of the
Palestinian landscape. I expect the GE people to write back and blame their data
providers for the problem, but enough complaining e-mails might get their
attention. I'm off to SA tomorrow, see you in October.
Jamie
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