After generating a certain controversy for allegedly removal of Palestine from a region neighboring Israel, Google issued a press release denying any action on the map service:

“There was never a ‘Palestine’ label on Google Maps, however, we discovered a bug that removed the tags for ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza Strip’. We are working quickly to bring these labels back to the area, ” a Google spokesman said on the ‘removal of Palestine’ internet sensation.

The representative of the search engine also reported that the GIF published on social networks, which showed the label being removed from Google Maps, is false. You can view it below:

Up until July 25 the word Palestine was on Google’s map.  (@jvplive)

This disputable GIF was posted by JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) August 9, 2016.

According to the GIF — that JVP posted on Twitter — guaranteed that “Up until July 25 the word Palestine was on Google’s guide.” Tweeted by JVP on August ninth, the GIF demonstrated a “prior and then afterward” shot of “Palestine” being replaced by “Israel” on Google Maps.

An online appeal to from March 2016 denounced Google and suggested that its “two Jewish authors” expelled “Palestine” in view of their “connections” to Israel and the controversial shameful GIF was a wild achievement. It raised an internet sensation worldwide against Israel. The request of gathered more than 180,000 signatures in a single day. Twitter was inundated with hostile to Israel tweets. They raised the voices to avoid/blacklist google.

A couple days after the fact the reality of the situation was uncovered. Google matter of factly expressed that there had never been a PALESTINE mark on Google Maps.

The allegation made by the JVP, that the Google had replaced “Palestine” with Israel, was a total lie. The GIF was a fake.

In the long run notwithstanding, JVP surrendered. At some point between August twelfth and August fourteenth, they erased the fake GIF from their Twitter channel.

Regardless of the possibility that JVP’s story is valid and they received an erroneous bit of data, there can be no arguing guiltlessness. The truth of the matter is that a JVP part doctored a Google Maps picture by embeddings “Palestine” where there never was one.

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Krishna Thapa