Jerusalem, ISRAEL (Article# 74) 2/22/2008

I was gonna take a week off this week. I arrived home safely from my trip to America and other than my luggage missing my flight and spending an extra 6 hours in London, there wasn’t much to talk about and I was looking forward to some downtime.

One thing I did do last week was vote on the “monopoly” website for Jerusalem, Israel to be a space on the new “world” version of the board game Monopoly. Apparently, as a marketing ploy the Hasbro company is having internet voting to be named a space in the game. The top twenty cities get in, with another twenty cities having a run-off for the final two spots.

Every other day or so, I have been seeing either emails or newspaper articles about “getting out the vote” and making sure that Jerusalem gets not only a spot on the board, but a valuable ranking as well. When I first voted, we were ranked either 7th or 8th and I had been seeing a lot of comments in emails that people should get the word out and move us up in rank. To vote go to http://www.monopolyworldvote.com/en_US/world.

This morning, I was checking my email when I saw a flood of people commenting on a new change to the voting website. Apparently, the voting push has been somewhat successful, as Israel had moved up to 4th place in the voting (we have sunk back to 5th position since then). However, that wasn’t the most dramatic move for Jerusalem.

Apparently, somebody complained to Hasbro and they have changed the way they describe Jerusalem in the voting. Hasbro has apparently decided that Jerusalem, Israel’s capitol city, is no longer part of Israel and has deleted any reference to Israel from the voting. Istanbul is still in Turkey, Riga is still in Latvia, yet Jerusalem has been hyperspaced into nothingness.

I cannot imagine that Hasbro has thought this through. Even though I will agree that most of the world hates us (Jews or Israel – take your pick), the fact that Hasbro would so brazenly remove the “Israel” tag from its site is astonishing. They will almost certainly hide behind the UN not recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel or some other nonsense.

So what can we do?

The people of Beit Shemesh (at least) are in frenzy over this. At least one lawyer has already contacted a USA law firm to file suit (and posted the details in an email) and there have been numerous emails encouraging people to contact Hasbro directly to protest this decision. Whether by email or phone, I agree that each person who sends Hasbro a personal message of disgust for their stance on Israel.

I encourage you to either call them by phone at 888-836-7025 (I got this number from their customer service website) or write them an email in the form on their website at http://hasbro.custhelp.com (also from their website) - or even both.

I myself wrote,

“Dear Hasbro,

I am disgusted and outraged at your blatant removal of Israel as the country of Jerusalem. Hasbro is a US corporation and the US government has recognized Jerusalem not only as being in Israel but as its capitol. As a dual Israeli/US citizen, I am embarassed that any US company would bow to Anti Semitic pressure and take such action.

Since you are holding a vote and encourage the democratic process, I am encouraging everyone on my email list or that I may come in contact with to vote. Not on your website, but with their wallets. I cannot support a company that knowingly discriminates against my people and my country.

Sincerely,

Shmuel Katz”