McGraw-Hill Destroys Textbook After Complaints That Maps Are Anti-Israel

Do Israel supporters get to rewrite history?

Michael Arria is an associate editor at AlterNet and the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow @MichaelArria on Twitter.

Inside Higher Ed  reports that the educational publishing company McGraw-Hill is withdrawing and destroying all copies of a textbook after complaints that it contained maps that were anti-Israel.

The book, Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World, had a series of maps that documented the Palestinian loss of land that occurred between 1946 and 2000. A number of Israel supporters criticized the maps, insisting that they're based on anti-Israel propaganda, as in this blog post. The post claims that all land given up by Israel has been given in the "pursuit of peace."[Israel] has offered a great deal more for peace with the Palestinians," reads the post, "The book could have gone into why they continuously reject these peace offers…but it chose not to. The textbook authors have taken a false narrative and are teaching it to students across the nation."

Insider Higher Ed ran a statement from Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill Education. "As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review," said Mathis, "The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book."

The map used in the book can be seen below.

00:0000:49

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/mcgraw-hill-destroys-textbook-after-complaints-maps-are-anti-israel#overlay-context=