Jet Blue Effaces Israel From Its In-Flight Maps

The airline Jet Blue has recently changed its in-flight maps. Now on its screens appears a map wherein the word “Israel” has been completely overlaid, in text of a much larger size, with the words “Palestinian Territory.” No explanation for the change has been given by Jet Blue. More on this disturbing toponymic effacement can be found here: “JetBlue Airways changes Israel’s borders and name to ‘Palestinian Territories,'” Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2024:

American airline JetBlue Airways has updated their in-flight map to show the words “Palestinian Territories” in significantly larger text than the word “Israel,” to the point where it is overlaid on the entire state of Israel, N12 reported Tuesday evening.

Hodaya Knafo, an Israeli woman studying in the United States, told N12 that she was on a domestic flight from Miami to San Diego when she tried to show another passenger where Israel was located on her seat’s personal screen. “The label was prominently displayed in a way that didn’t seem innocent,” she said, and additionally, the borders were incorrect.”

According to the map, Israel’s northern border does not include the Golan Heights….

Someone at Jet Blue decided to remove from its screen map of Israel the Golan Heights, which was annexed by the Jewish state in 1981. This was not an accident, but a clear political statement: the Golan annexation is illegitimate, and we refuse to show it as part of Israel.

Wanting to show a seatmate just how small her country was, Ms. Knafo was shocked to see it even smaller than she knew it to be, stripped of the Golan Heights. And what’s more, the overlaid large-text “Palestinian Territories” made it almost impossible to make out the small-text toponym “Israel.”

Along with the removal of the Golan Heights, “They don’t show a division of the West Bank, so it doesn’t seem like that’s what they meant by the ‘Palestinian Territory’ label.” Knafo continued, “Also, I think this is new because I don’t remember seeing something like this on previous flights.”…

There is no separate designation for the “West Bank” on the JetBlue map, which meant, Knafo reasoned, that “Palestinian Territories” referred not only to the “West Bank,” but rather, to all of the territory west of the Jordan River. How many JetBlue passengers will come away with that distinct, and dangerous, impression? Are we supposed to ignore the territories assigned to the future Jewish state by the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, which included all of the land “from the river to the sea”? And how many passengers will come away believing that the Golan Heights are not part of Israel?

This example of cartographical malfeasance needs to be brought to the attention of Jewish groups who, in turn, should be pressuring JetBlue to return to its previous maps, where a small-type “Israel” is not covered over by a large-type “Palestinian Territories,” and the Golan Heights is properly shown as part of Israel. And if JetBlue refuses, there is always the threat of a boycott.