True or False?
German auto manufacturers seem to have no excuses for Israel being left off maps of the Middle East on their web sites. It began on August 8th, 2002, when attention was drawn to BMW’s Middle East web site, whose map of BMW service locations throughout the Middle East identified Palestine, but left off Israel. Once BMW was made aware of the issue, they pulled the map from their web site, and removed the link from their ‘BMW in Your Country’ page.
BMW later said in a press release, “BMW Group regrets having published this map on one of its internet sites. Obviously there have been faults in designing and programming the site. We are working on correcting these faults as soon as possible. As a vehicle manufacturer, we are not involved in Middle East politics, do not support any of the given political attitudes, and did not aim to make any kind of political statement.”
However, when Mercedes-Benz’s Middle East website also displayed a map of Middle Eastern countries hosting Mercedes-Benz dealerships, it left Israel off the map as well. Parent corporation, Daimler-Chrysler, claimed it was because only countries that had Middle East distributors were labelled on the map.
But, the explanation was clearly false, because neither Iran or Iraq appeared on the Middle East distributor list, yet both were clearly identified on the map, while Israel was left off. Mercedes-Benz quickly removed the original map and replaced it with one that also left Iran and Iraq unlabeled. It then removed the recently replaced map, and replaced it with yet another map, which omitted the names of all the countries in the Middle East.
True Or False? Israel was left off maps of the Middle East by BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
TRUE
