Hasbro responds (UPDATED)
I have just received the following email from Hasbro's public relations firm regarding Jerusalem, Israel and the new world Monopoly game.Parker Brothers, the makers of board game Monopoly has embarked upon an exercise to find the world’s most popular cities as voted for by the public. It was never our intention to print any countries on the final boards and any online tags were merely used as a geographic reference to help with city selection. This is clearly stated in the terms and conditions of our campaign.My response: If that's the case, why did you delete "Israel" from Jerusalem's slot in the voting?
We would never want to enter into any political debate. We apologise for any upset this has caused our Monopoly fans and hope that they continue to support their favourite cities, all of which are deserving of a place on our final board - Monopoly Here and Now : The World Edition which will be released in Autumn 2008. The 20 pre-selected cities with the highest worldwide votes on February 29 2008 will make it onto the board. Plus voters will have from February 29 to March 9 2008 to vote on the most nominated Wildcard cities. Only the top two will make it on the board.
UPDATE 7:20 PM
I give Peter Burling a lot of credit. He responded within half an hour:
All country tags are currently being removed from the websites (there are 37 translations and it takes a while) – cities will only be represented by their common name as they will appear on the board. I hope this does not stop you from supporting Jerusalem a very worthy and wonderful city.No, it won't stop me from supporting Jerusalem. It's a pity to see Hasbro forced to be so politically correct.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:46 PM
5 Comments:
Hey Carl - I also wrote to them and got the same 2 responses. It seems a little overboard to change 37 translations when they could just add one country, but at least they are making a change.
Great job pointing this out, and I pat us all on the back for making them change anything.
apparently every other city has a city and a country listed together. it is such an outrage that Israel is being singled out for this treatment
I'm disappointed. Speaking of Jerusalem, the city's future was discussed even before Annapolis and Haim Ramon's leaks indicated that it was being negotiated even before Ehud Olmert confirmed it on New Years' Eve to the Jerusalem Post. This according to Danny Dayan, the Yesha Council Chairman who was interviewed by Arutz Sheva. So that went aways back and isn't even new.
One can't expect Hasbro to be more Zionist on Jerusalem than Israel's leaders are who think the capital needs to be divided to get an agreement - any kind of agreement with Abbas as Tzipi Livni confirmed yesterday at the Jerusalem Conference.
Now that they removed the country names from every city's entry, there's something else the world can blame on the jooooooooooooz.
There is no problem resolved here. They've apllied a sledgehammer to everyone because they refused to associate Jerusalem with Israel.
The whole world is sick.
Can people really blame campaigners for “Jerusalem, Israel” for the deletion of all countries? Jews are just as much entitled to encourage voting for Jerusalem as other groups are, see http://www.helpriga.lv/ for example. The people who really caused the fuss were the pro-Palestinian groups who could not stomach seeing Israel written after the word Jerusalem. It was their complaints and the subsequent media hullabaloo, most notably by BBC online who contacted Hasbro to question them on the matter, which kicked started the deletion process.
Hasbro resorted to their draconian move claiming that “it was never our intention to print any countries on the final boards and any online tags were merely used as a geographic reference”. Yet originally it seemed that this would not be the case. According to the BBC, Hasbro said they would “not second-guess the UN, should Jerusalem be included”, implying that the corresponding countries would indeed appear on the board. However, Hasbro were too quick to swallow the anti-Israel version of the current situation vis-à-vis Jerusalem. The United Nations partition vote of 1947 which deemed that the city become a "corpus separatum", under international supervision, was only a non-binding recommendation which was rejected by the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states. The UN itself did not intervene to assist Jerusalem's Jewish population during the 1948 siege. Therefore this internationalization proposal, which had considerable support in the West due to Christian interests in the city, should be regarded as a historical failed attempt at preempting a political outcome which the UN could not control. Jerusalem will most certainly never become the world’s only “international city”.
Hasbro have bowed to political pressure from those who seek to rob Israel of her rightful heritage. If Israel collects the garbage in Jerusalem, it should be listed as the corresponding country. After the complaints of some radical Arab national sympathizers, it is Hasbro who have, by their removal of Israel, launched themselves into a political furor after they decided to “second-guess” the reality in Jerusalem today.
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