Mandiner’s András Stumpf believes the story of the Middle East History Map for Hungarian schools is worthy of a sketch by the British Monty Python programme. As a result of the rule requiring public schools to use uniform textbooks (and maps), which was introduced three years ago, the competent government agency found itself in an unexpectedly delicate position. It received a formal diplomatic note from the Palestinian ambassador who protested against the idea of calling today’s Palestine Canaan.

He demanded that the Biblical name be replaced with the word Palestine. Representatives of the Ministry for Human Resources met the Palestinian side 13 times and discussed the issue with the Jewish Community Round Table 12 times, but could not reach a consensus, because any solution would have been interpreted as an argument in favour of the contemporary territorial claims of either Israel or the Palestinian Arabs.

As a result, the Ministry decided to leave out all contentious names and lines from the map. The Holy Land has no name and Moses’ route from Egypt to the Promised Land was deleted from the map. Stumpf calls on Monty Python to feel free to use this story in their comedy programmes.

Source: BudaPost

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