UPDATE

Following the publication of this post and the complaints of many HonestReporting subscribers, CNN has removed the map in question and replaced it with an image of the aftermath of a Syrian airstrike in Aleppo.

While we question how the error occurred at all, nonetheless we commend CNN for taking prompt action.

* * *

As the year draws to a close, CNN Money looks ahead focusing on “Beyond ISIS: 2016’s scariest geopolitical hot spots.” Unsurprisingly, Syria and the Middle East features. But look at the map above that CNN has chosen to accompany the text.

Israel has been wiped from the map and instead replaced with “Palestina,” a Spanish or Portuguese translation of Palestine. The image was taken from Getty Images’ iStock and is not a creation of CNN’s graphics team.

Clearly, however, somebody at CNN selected this image out of all the potential images that could have been chosen to illustrate the Middle East. Therefore, it should be easy to replace with a less provocative image.

HonestReporting Managing Editor Simon Plosker adds:

Whether it was an oversight or something more sinister, CNN’s illustration of the Middle East without Israel is completely unacceptable. At a time when the state’s very legitimacy is being called into question by vicious anti-Israel extremists, any message that Israel does not belong in the Middle East plays into this false narrative and feeds those like the Iranian ayatollahs who wish to see Israel erased from the map. How many times can CNN keep making these shoddy errors before the network takes remedial action to address its Israel problem? We fully expect CNN to replace this inaccurate map as quickly as possible.

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