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February 21, 2008

Hasbro pulls countries from Monopoly site after Israel flap

PROVIDENCE -- An employee of Hasbro Inc. eliminated the word "Israel" after the city of Jerusalem in an online contest to select names for a new Monopoly board game after complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and bloggers who believe the city is not in Israel, the company said today.

A day after "Israel" was removed, the Pawtucket-based company apologized and pulled all country names from cities listed on the site.

Hasbro is asking people to vote at the Monopoly Web site on which cities will be included in its upcoming Monopoly Here and Now: The World Edition. Until Tuesday, every city on the site listed a country, including Paris, France; Cairo, Egypt and Jerusalem, Israel.

But a "mid-level" employee, based in London, decided on her own without consulting senior management to pull "Israel" from Jerusalem after hearing the complaints, Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness said today. Israel considers the whole of Jerusalem to be its capital, while Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

The change left Jerusalem as the only one of dozens of cities listed without a country.

Hasbro management was alerted to the change Wednesday when its London office saw a spike in traffic on the site and figured out what happened, Charness said. The company then pulled every country name, so Paris and Cairo also are now listed alone, he said.

"It was a bad decision, one that we rectified relatively quickly," he said. "This is a game. We never wanted to enter into any political debate. We apologize to our Monopoly fans."

-- The Associated Press

Charness added that the game, due out in the fall, was never meant to include countries. The countries were added to the Web site to make it easier to vote.

"Monopoly is the world's most popular game," he said. "We want it to remain that way."

Voting in the contest ends Feb. 29 for the Top 20 cities and March 9 for two wild card cities nominated by voters. The top vote-getting city will get the prime Boardwalk spot: as of Tuesday, it was Istanbul, Turkey.

Posted by Jack Perry at 2:53 PM | Permalink

February 21, 2008

Hasbro pulls countries from Monopoly site after Israel flap

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