Israeli tourism ads are being removed from the tube, following massive pressure and complaints.Late last week, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign started to receive information from members about adverts that they had seen on the London Underground. The adverts by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and ThinkIsrael included a map that included the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, together with Jews for Justice for Palestinians, immediately started working to bring these adverts down. We complained to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ourselves, and notified our members and supporters, many of whom also made complaints to the ASA, Transport for London and CBS Outdoor, which was the company that put up the adverts.
Sarah Colborne, Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Director of Campaigns and Operations, said:
‘The Palestine Solidarity Campaign welcomes the removal of these adverts, which had a map showing Israel as including the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights – which are all illegally occupied by Israel. These adverts wiped Palestine off the map. It was particularly grotesque to use this map in an advert for tourism, given that under the Israeli blockade of Gaza, even humanitarian aid staff are denied entry.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign had found the posters astonishing, given that the ASA had already upheld a previous complaint against ThinkIsrael.com for using a similarly misleading map in an advertisement placed in the Radio Times in 2007’.
On that occasion, the ASA ruled that ThinkIsrael.com had breached the ‘truthfulness’ clause, and also the ‘non-response’ clause, when it failed to reply to ASA’s correspondence.
PSC welcomes the deluge of complaints from members and supporters on this issue.
www.palestinesolidaritycampaign.org
