I won't go into detail deconstructing this image, but this is a great example of a lot of geographic concepts (banal nationalism, Gottmann's iconography, the use of maps as propaganda, the signals and affective response of color in cartography, etc.). Note that Israel is "surrounded by enemies," despite the fact that the two non-Israel nation-states indicated on the map both have formal peace agreements with Israel. Gaza is reduced to being "Hamas" while the West Bank is given some status as a quasi-nation-state--interestingly, the Security Barrier's route through the western edge of the West Bank seems to be demarcated as a different class of territory, as well. Finally, the whole bit is summed up by equivocating "peace" with "support for Israel," which naturally is the ideal of Christians and Jews--never mind those Christian Palestinians, and let's not even get into those warmongering Muslims.
I enabled ads on this blog as an experiment to see what would come up, and to try to raise the profile of this blog so that I could connect to other people and organizations with interests in the region. I'm sickened by this ad, though, and am contemplating disabling ads. The only "plus" I see where this ad is concerned is that it gives me an opportunity to attack some of the persistent propaganda perpetrated by the virulent pro-Israel (and anti-Palestinian) crowd... and the ad costs them money.
So maybe I'll click on it myself, just so I can take a few tenths of a cent out of their coffers.
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