Israel Matzav: Ethnic cleansing at Google?

Ethnic cleansing at Google?

Reader Yaakov H shares a letter he sent to Google:

Gentlemen:

Today, I happened to spend a bit of time looking at Google logos (a/k/a Google Doodles) -- those adorable, themed logos that Goggle releases in honor of various holidays and anniversaries. Curious as to whether Google noted Israeli or Jewish holidays, I used the search function on the logo page to search for Israel.

I then clicked through the results, and discovered something extremely disturbing. In each case where I clicked a time period to see the logos for that time period, the Israeli logos that were supposedly on the page (and that had been picked up by the search engine) were not on the current page. And yet, when I clicked through to the cached version of the page, the Israeli logos were there. At some point, the current versions of the pages had been purged of all Israeli/Jewish logos -- and only those logos.

For example, the cached version of the logos from April-June 2008 shows 37 logos, including two Israeli ones: one from June 30, 2008 and one from May 8, 2008. Yet the current version of the page shows only 35 logos; the two Israeli logos have been scrubbed clean from the current page.

The exact same situation exists with respect to the logos from July-September 2006 (cached and current versions; the logo for Rosh Hashana, a Jewish holiday, has been cleansed); January-March 2007 (cached and current versions; Purim, another Jewish holiday, has been eliminated); July-September 2007 (cached and current versions); January-March 2009 (cached and current versions); and July-September 2009 (cached and current versions).

In each case, the Israeli/Jewish logos -- and no other logo of any other nation or ethnic group -- have been deleted from the current version of the page, an Orwellian Bowdlerization designed, it would appear, to make out of Israel an unperson.

Can you explain this phenomenon to me, in terms that will not leave me outraged as an Israeli, a Jew, and indeed as a person?

Hmmm.

Israel Matzav: Ethnic cleansing at Google?