Humanity has not always used maps.
Maps have evolved into excuses for political and military policies and actions.
It is a symptom of the flawed Western world that to "wipe a nation off the map" is regarded as an inflammatory statement to be condemned on principle.
In point of fact, most "mapped" nations would prefer to wipe at least sections of their neighbor's territories off "the map"...
and "the map" itself is a loaded phrase including logical fallacies...
as there does not now nor ever has existed a single map regarded by all of humanity as the legitimate reference point of any geographical instance.
In a world of true freedom the thought of removing anything but nature from a map is perfectly legitimate and valid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
On October 26, 2005, IRIB News, an English-language subsidiary of the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, filed a story on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent speech to the "World Without Zionism" conference in Asia. The story was entitled: Ahmadinejad: Israel must be wiped off the map.[1]
Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map",[5][6][7] an English idiom which means to "cause a place to stop to exist",[8] or to "obliterate totally",[9] or "destroy completely".[10]
Ahmadinejad's phrase was " بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود " according to the text published on the President's Office's website.[11]
