Israel left off map at Canberra conference
THE Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has apologised after Israel was left off a map featured at a federal government-hosted conference in Canberra last week.
THE Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has apologised after Israel was left off a map featured at a federal government-hosted conference in Canberra last week.
In the presentation titled “Managing Risks at a Nuclear Facility” at the Security in Government conference organised by the Federal Attorney-General’s Department, a map was displayed of the Middle East.
Instead of Israel being labelled “Israel”, the name “Palestine” appeared. The map was displayed for a few minutes in full view of the several hundred people in the conference centre at the time.
A spokesperson for ANSTO told The AJN this week the organisation is “very sorry for the error, and is taking measures to prevent such a thing from happening again”.
“We are sorry for the offence it has caused, and we are investigating how this slide was gotten so wrong,” the spokesperson said. “The slide excluded both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and from one look at its branding, it is clear it was sourced from a third party. We have therefore already instigated new rules to ensure presentations that include supplied material are better vetted.”
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) chair Dvir Abramovich said the ADC is glad that ANSTO has apologised and “owned up to the fact that this omission is unacceptable”.
Stating that the international effort to delegitimise Israel “comes from many quarters”, Abramovich said what we don’t expect is for “respectable government agencies to be engaged in this kind of geographical distortion and to become active partners in this process”.
“Such conduct does a great disservice to the reputation and credibility of any agency. The standard should be that all government slides and publications contain factually accurate, objective materials that are not tainted with bias or are politicised,” he said.
“When an entire country is expunged, in the minds of many, it sends the message that Israel is not a member of the family of nations and that the Jewish people do not have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.”
EVAN ZLATKIS
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