Trust ye not in lying words, saying: ‘The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, are these.’ (Jeremiah 7:4)

ABC’s local San Diego affiliate, 10 News, reported that a local state university language professor had distributed a map in class in which Israel had been replaced by “Palestine.” Angered and unsure how to respond to the incident, Jewish students approached StandWithUs, a pro-Israel campus organization.

On the second day of the Arabic course at San Diego State University, the professor handed out a map of the Middle East in which the State of Israel was mislabelled.  Jewish students in the class were immediately upset, but were not sure how to approach the issue.  They were concerned that confronting the teacher would lead to bias against them in the classroom and to poor grades.

The students turned over a copy of the map to StandWithUs, which posted the map on its Facebook page and sent out a newsletter to its members, urging the community to department chair and the Arabic language coordinator.

As one student anonymously told the news outlet, “I don’t really believe it was the right place for dialogue.  It is a language class, it’s not a class about conflict.”

“I want to see an apology from the professor, and I want to see him to hand out a correct map,” the student said.

StandWithUs points out that the map  “not only fails to label ‘Israel’ as a legitimate country,” but that “it falsely portrays the entire territory of Israel as ‘Palestine.'”

Nicole Bernstein of StandWithUs raised the matter directly with the department chair.  She was told, in a statement issued by the department to the non-profit group, that the map was intended to reflect the view of the local Arab community and that through class discussion of the map, the professor had hoped to examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and history of the State of Israel.  The statement went on to assert that a corrected map would be distributed to the class.

At the time, however, the students were not given any such indication.  “Whether it was intentional or not intentional, whether it was part of course work or part of a plan, none of that context was given,” Bernstein said. “That is what the problem was.”

Ten News also contacted the university, and received the following response:

“While SDSU encourages scholarly debate and discussion of varying opinions, presenting inaccurate information to students in not acceptable. SDSU’s Provost has conferred with the department chair, who spoke with the faculty member. This inaccurate portrayal will not reoccur.”

Still, neither the students nor the organization are completely satisfied with the response.  “Regardless of the views, there are false images and realistic images,” the anonymous student said. “Bringing his own bias to the classroom was just not o.k.”  They want an apology from the professor.

Although the Palestinian Authority has gone to the United Nations for recognition, the United States does not consider Palestine a sovereign nation.  US Secretary of State John Kerry is brokering ongoing peace talks between the two sides in an effort to reach a final status agreement.