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No the following is not a joke. It is not a quotation from a column by satirist Andy Borowitz. It’s a for real report about publishing giant Harper Collins apologizing for bowing to pressure to leave Israel out of an Atlas. The fact this occured shows how fragile facts are in the 21st century: deny a fact and it some how erases or changes a fact And it is a f-a-c-t that Israel exists.

Publishing giant HarperCollins has apologised for omitting Israel from an atlas and has vowed to destroy any remaining copies.

A spokesman said the company ‘regrets’ the omission from the Collins Middle East Atlas and has removed it from sale. All remaining stock will be pulped
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HarperCollins was criticised for not labelling the country on the map – bought by English-speaking schools in the majority-Muslim Gulf, while clearly marking Gaza and Jordan.

Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins, had told The Tablet that including Israel would have been ‘unacceptable’ to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated ‘local preferences’.

Very honestly? Who ever could have imagined even five years ago that a respected company such as Harper Collins could decide to erase from an Atlas a map showing the F-A-C-T that today the nation of Israel exists? Forget about if some don’t want it to exist or want to give it another name, or change how it is configured —but it is f-a-c-t that it exists.

And if this was allowed to stand, what a precedent it would set not just for publishing but encouraging groups to clamor to erase f-a-c-t-s of all kinds about those who they oppose from printed or online material?

But in a statement, a spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas.

But HarperCollins has put the omission down to a genuine error.

A spokesman said: ‘HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas.

‘This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.’

But the decision to omit Israel on the map has sparked anger on social media, with some Twitter users calling for the boycott of HarperCollins.

And here’s some of what we at TMV see on Twitter today:

I can't find any mention of Murdoch's Harper Collins wiping Israel from the map to placate Gulf clients in @thetimes http://t.co/cPuUwaco6d

— Meirion Jones (@MeirionTweets) January 1, 2015

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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