The Weather Channel digital bow to pressure by Israel’s lobby and classifies Jerusalem as part of ‘Israel’
The digital component of The Weather Channel has listed Jerusalem as part of ‘Israel’ due to pressure by the American right wing and pro-Israel lobby.
The website, which is considered as the world’s most popular forecasting website, had listed Jerusalem as in the state of Palestine before the American conservative channel ‘Fox News’ shed light on the issue to extort an apology by a representative for the company, who said that it was a mistake and has since been “corrected”.
“It’s important to note that any searches for Jerusalem weather on The Weather Channel app and weather.com surfaced results for ‘Jerusalem, Israel,'” the rep told Fox News. “This particular issue occurred when users searched on external search engines, which would direct to an old page that should have been removed. We have fixed this issue, and search engine inquiries for Jerusalem weather will surface results for ‘Jerusalem, Israel.'”
While television network component of The Weather Channel was last year acquired by media mogul Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios from The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital and Comcast/NBCUniversal, the digital assets including Weather.com and its app remain under the umbrella of IBM’s The Weather Company division, which bought them in early 2016.
Palestine has been recognized as an independent state since 2018 by 137 members of the United Nations. In 1947 the United Nations decided to announce Jerusalem as an international area, however ‘Israel’ occupied the western part of the holy city and moved its governing bodies to it. Then in 1967 the occupation state of Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem and swallowed the whole city, declaring it as its capital.
