ByJan Shure, Jan Shure
The Israel Government Tourist Office is to remove a series of holiday posters from London Underground stations following a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority.
The complaint was about a map featured in the poster which showed the Occupied Territories incorporated into Israel.
As we reported last week, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign complained about the posters, part of the £40,000 IGTO Think.Israel campaign.
The ASA is to investigate the complaint, and expects to have an adjudication within the next few weeks. I
n all, it received 340 complaints, including one from Jihad Makdissi, a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in London, and Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
The PSC and Dan Judelson of Jews for Justice also wrote to complain to CBS Outdoor, which is responsible for the poster sites, and to Transport for London.
But before any decision could be made, tourism chiefs withdrew the posters.
The posters were due to go up in 150 places across the London Underground network, but only 108 had been displayed.
The tourist office said it is investigating the possibility of producing a new poster, without the contentious map, and putting it in the 42 sites where the others had not been displayed.
In March 2007, a similar complaint was made to the ASA after a tourist office advertisement in the Radio Times used a map of Israel that showed Qumran, which is in the West Bank. At the time, the ASA expressed “concern” that tourism officials failed to respond to the complaint.