Middle East mapAussie stationery chain pulls world globe which names Palestine, omits Israel

The Australian stationery chain Typo has stumbled into one of the world’s most contentious issues – and had to pull a line of globes which named Palestine but omitted the label “Israel.”

Israel’s name was not omitted altogether: The globe was designed so that Israel and twelve other small countries were represented by a number on the map, corresponding to a number in a legend at the base of the globe.

Supporters of Israel charged the company with anti-Semitism, and Jewish organizations said they would call for boycotting the company’s products unless the design was corrected.

Palestinian supporters, however, threatened to boycott the company if it did halt the production and sales of the controversial globes.

The Independent reports that the problem with the original design were first pointed out on 21 January by customers who posted angry notes on the company’s Facebook page. One post asked why Typo was selling a globe “that has wiped Israel from the face of the earth.”

Typo defended the original design decision, noting that it was a Mercator projection from around 1860, and that it was “an official map from an international body that has been approved for export” and Israel’s label had been omitted “purely because there wasn’t enough space to include the name.”

Two hours after issuing its first statement, the store chain said it had “decided to remove the globes from sale in-store and online and will halt all future production.”

That decision drew bitter complaints from supporters of Palestine, who flooded the store’s social media accounts with angry comments and threats of boycott.

The company, which is part of the Cotton On Group, on Monday posted a note on its Facebook page, saying that new globes would be manufactured labelling every country.

“Typo is not removing any country from the globe. We made the decision to recall the current globes from sale as we are sourcing new artwork from our supplier that has every country marked on it but with no need for a key. All countries will remain on the map, the key will not,” the company said.

“We never intended to offend anyone with this product.”

Critics noted that there were other errors on the recalled globe: It labelled the Caspian Sea twice and misspelled the name of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

The store sells a lot of travel-related merchandise, and the controversy over the globes spilled over into comments on otherwise uncontroversial items being advertised on the company’s Facebook page. One advertising show a travel bag with the tagline, “I just took the road less travelled … And now I’m lost!”

Among the replies was: “Could you be lost because you don’t know how to use a map?”