Free Republic

<p>The country of Israel is missing from at least part of ESPN’s website, while Palestine is included throughout, raising the eyebrows of some sports fans, since Israel is an existing country and Palestine is not. The portion where Israel is missing is in the TV-listing section of ESPNAmerica.com. A drop-down menu at the top right of the page has countries listed in alphabetical order. On the list are Hungary, Iceland, Iran and Ireland, immediately followed by Italy, Jordan and Kazakhstan. Though Israel should appear between Ireland and Italy, it’s not found anywhere on the list, though Palestine is included, between Oman and Poland. Despite Israel’s absence from that portion of ESPN’s site, the country is found in other places where it’s included in other drop-down menus, including here. Israel also appears on ESPN’s contact page, in a long list of countries. Ironically, in that contact-page list, ESPN lists “Palestinian Territories,” and not “Palestine” as it does elsewhere on the site. A spokeswoman for ESPN told WND she was looking into the issue. Meanwhile, some online messageboards have been discussing the situation. One commenter wrote: “I emailed a complaint with a few angry words. I’m sure they will get right on it. But, seriously, this is pathetic on their part.”</p>

ESPN erases Israel from its list of countries served ESPN America supplies programs to much of the world. I wanted to check the Israel schedule and to my surprise they don’t list Israel in their roster of countries served. Rather they have something called Palestine in there instead. Since when is Palestine a country? Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think the Palestinian Authority has a cable or satellite service of its own. I know their hotels feed in from the Israeli companies. People may have satellite dishes but I don’t think the Authority has the infrastructure to bring in...