Multiple commenters here are asking if the towns and villages were ever included in Apple maps in the first place, and some people are saying we should obviously assume they were.
However, a quick search reveals at least a few people claiming that Apple Maps has always been empty for Lebanon outside of major cities (and at least one commenter says they are Lebanese):
You can look up Maroun Al-Ras [0] and it's map coordinate [1]. If you search for the name, you find a garden of the same name, but not the village. The instagram reel that was posted earlier had more context [2].
From wikipedia:
> In October 2024, IDF forces operated in the village as part of its invasion of southern Lebanon. The Israeli flag was raised, after the victory.
Which Apple might use as a justification. There is a Israeli flag, so it must belong to them.
Israel is done being on the receiving end of the Iranian octopus. No more Iranian missiles, rockets, drones, or Iranian funded and directed Islamist terrorists on its borders.
Only Syria is an exception: there, it was internal Druze pressure on the Israeli government to act to protect their brothers in Syria.
This reminds me a bit of the Gulf of America fiasco from last year where if you changed your location to outside the US it would go back to showing Gulf of Mexico.
I'm not sure why they would do this for US users unless the US government requested it.
Google maps has done this forever. A good chunk of countries have disputed territories, and never in human history there has been a "universal" map that everybody agrees on.
Sure, but I'm in the US, which is not a party to the conflict between Israel and Lebanon. To my knowledge the US continues to recognize Lebanon as a sovereign country.
Yea, that user made the most ridiculous statement.
I think the Onion did a piece saying something like "Netanyahu dead, Trump must go back to being the only president of the United States", and while satire, is a bit enlightening of the actual situation here.
In the case of the "Gulf of America" thing there was a clear and open statement by the executive that they wanted the maps changed (note that even in the US the name is still legally "Gulf of Mexico"). Apple and Google both decided to acquiesce to curry favor.
TMK there is no current government order to eliminate large swaths of Lebanon from maps. So the fact that Apple is doing this (seemingly on its own, despite all other mapping services reflecting the original place names) is the thing I'm explicitly calling out as being weird.
What's a little occupied, extra-territorial buffer zone between respectful neighbors? Nothing says "I respect your sovereignty" more leveling all buildings to the ground. Golan now, there's nothing to see here.
They hardly have electricity so there's nobody to fight back really. The international community left them to die after that big explosion and the country has been scraping by ever since.
We had to build a very expensive and risky pier to get aid into to Gaza instead of just sending it through our ally Israel to be delivered over the ground. There's something different than a normal ally relationship.
A very expensive and risky pier that still just delivered the aid to an IDF base inside Gaza and not to Gazans (or aid orgs) directly. Based on a plan from an Israeli think tank...
I think part of the weird disbelief on my part is the speed with which those changes are submitted and implemented. I don't recall things changing that fast with disputed territories in Ukraine/Russia conflict.
i wouldn’t consider it very disputed, the only country “disputing” who it belongs to is israel. all other countries agree that area belongs to lebanon.
This saddens me as well, because that's the type of thing that happens every day where I live, but...
> I don’t understand why it is allowed to continue.
The answer is even sadder. It's even worse. And it is as follows: because there's not enough people who are taking action, and from those taking action there's not enough people in power to change something significantly. At least that's how I see it. And... I can't even blame those who don't take action - because many people feel completely powerless, they feel like "what you can do to stop this war/other thing if you're just a regular human?"
There's also a huge cost for taking action about this especially in the US. You can easily get thrown out of school, have your career destroyed or be deported.
This. There are entire groups dedicated to rooting out any sign of deviation from per-authorized storyline and verbiage. It is particularly striking given that US considers itself 'free speech' bastion.
This is mostly a US thing. Netanyahu and Putin are two war criminals according to International Court of Justice. Although Trump threatened the ICJ, this doesn't change that basic fact.
Already in 2002 US passed the "American Service-Members' Protection Act" that allows USA to deploy military to prevent U.S. or allied officials and military personnel from being prosecuted or detained by the ICC.
It passed via bypartisan vote well in time before US launched the illegal invasion of Iraq in which it committed various war crimes.
This goes beyond direct action by individuals, it’s completely obvious what’s happening and it happens because the US political system has been captured.
Removed means they were there before which means comparison to other maps means nothing. It's possible Apple never had them in the first place. It's completely unverifiable with the link or your links.
OSM is a foundational data layer for GIS. If you're building a mapping service, you're almost certainly using OSM augmented by satellite imagery and other sources to find population zones that OSM has not found yet.
If you look at the Apple Maps satellite layer, you see thousands of structures spread across the area.
It is a reasonable assumption that these population centers were labeled and Apple (or one of its data partners) has withdrawn the labels.
My family name comes from a Christian town in the mountains of Lebanon. I'm positive it was previously on Apple Maps (I've
shown it to people before), but now has no label. It still exists on other mapping services and if I search on DuckDuckGo, the top info summary includes an Apple Maps widget with the town. Clicking on it takes me to Apple Maps with the pin in the right place, without a label.
So it's clear that it was there and is no longer there. I'm not making a judgement as to why it's no longer there (the post on X makes an unsubstantiated claim that it's intentional). Could be a bug for all I know. I'm unwilling to make the leap that it's some malicious attempt without actual evidence. I can only verify that it no longer has a label.
Why do you say unverified? You can activate the hybrid satellite view and look around. There are many towns and cities showing up on satellite view without any label. That's easily verifiable.
What's not easily verifiable is (1) whether they were removed, in the sense that they were there before and now are not; (2) if so, when; and (3) if so, why.
The obvious interpretation—that they've been removed for political reasons connected to the current war—would require knowing all 3 of these, and we don't know those things yet.
You can very easily verify the claim by following the link. Other than three major cities, there are no agglomeration listed in Lebanon. Other countries have detailed maps.
I believe OP is asking for a before/after of Apple Maps, because just seeing the map now isn't telling us whether Apple previously disclosed the villages and towns. I'm sure OP isn't thinking that the region is full of random roads out in the wilderness leading to nothing, which is the wrong conclusion the downvoters are probably leaping at.
I agree with you that it isn't clear what's going on here. People are giving it an interpretation that feels obvious given the current context, and we don't yet know whether this interpretation is true.
Usually the obvious interpretation of an isolated internet factoid turns out not to be true.
Those towns and villages will be rebuilt after the war. This is not excuse for what Apple did, it is justification for ethnic cleansing and occupation. Same as with Gaza City. It existed for 3500 years, it will be rebuilt and it will outlive the US/Israel for sure.
I'm sure Apple doesn't see it as malicious, and that's precisely the issue. Apple's political grandstanding has forced them into awkward and contradictory positions.
Yeah, maybe they have some kind of computer vision algorithm that automatically recognizes that the villages are now only rubble in satellite pictures and auomatically update the map /s
They did the same thing when there was a war between India and China a while ago. As brutal as it sounds, time and again Apple always loves to be on the side of whichever market is bigger. It's really that simple (business wise). Morally? Perhaps not.
The whole thread here seems to be full of people who know why Apple would have done this for some kind of bad reason, but nobody saying what that bad reason is. Anybody want to say it? I don't actually know other than something about Israel?
Israel is currently doing a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, with the stated aim of occupying the area and turning it into a depopulated "buffer zone" against Hezbollah. The Israeli army has announced that the Lebanese population must evacuate the entire area up to the Zahrani river.
In the area between the Israeli border and the Litani river (another river further south), the IDF is destroying all villages and has destroyed most of the bridges over the river, effectively isolating the area from the rest of Lebanon. All of that "smells" like annexation.
It seems Apple is doing preemptive compliance with the Israeli government here, by already erasing the destroyed villages from the map.
Apple, like a lot of other tech companies in the US has both deep financial ties to Israel as well as deep business connections. The answer can be as simple as 'The government asked them to do so and they complied'.
I don't know either but here is the answer from Wikipedia: "The main provider of map data is TomTom, but data is also supplied by Automotive Navigation Data, Getchee, Hexagon AB, IGN, Increment P, Intermap Technologies, LeadDog, MDA Information Systems, OpenStreetMap, and Waze."[1]
Satellite source would require detailed editing, and there’s very little chance those are fully automated. The entire Middle-East is being blocked, but only Lebanon is being affected.
It could be that they have a provider in Lebanon that was bombed but I’ve never heard of a cartographer with local dependencies like that.
Yeah, that’s the default option for detailed databases like that. Large deletion are either technical issues (and that should affect a lot more than one country) or deliberate edits.
Let’s put it this way. I’d rather send money to North Korea than give a cent to an Israeli business. I wish they’d get to learn the same amount of humility that made Germany ashamed to make any display of national pride, such as openly waving the flag, for many decades.
But given who their closest ally is, many more people have to die before that wretched country finds a healthier way forward.
All my solidarity to the Jewish people that disavow any connection with the state of Israel. Your voices aren’t loud enough.
This kind of innuendo adds nothing of value to the conversation. Either say what you intend to say, or just don't post. The coy "I know something but can't say it" is silly and just sounds like you have a persecution complex.
Entire segments of the podcast sphere are making their money talking about these so-called unspeakable subjects. Why don't you share what you really think.
Apple does much of their own mapping but they also rely quite a bit on external data sources, whichever one of those they use probably dropped the data for one reason or another.
They might genuinely not exist any more. The world's attention was heavily distracted by the campaign in Iran and the Hormuz strait while Israel never stopped doing their ...stuff... in Lebanon.
"The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations."
"The demolitions came after Israel’s minister of defence, Israel Katz, called for the destruction of “all houses” in border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” to stop threats to communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military destroyed 90% of homes in Rafah, in south Gaza."
This is gonna be interesting with all the anti-zionist Jews in the US or the religious zionist evangelical christians...
But it's in line with the pro-Israel pattern of putting words into peoples' mouth or simply asserting that certain terms are "codes" that mean something different than what the speaker actually said.
Apple: 1984 as a service. "We know walled gardens."
Quick: someone do the graphic, you can sell merch. Mail a freebie and a purchase link to every makerspace on the planet.
Some interesting background to current hostilities: "The UN Security Council has voted to wind up the near 50 year UNIFIL [peace keeping] mission after lobbying from Israel pushed the United States to veto its renewal. The mission will end in 2027."https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2025/08/un...
This is not an article, but a link to Apple Plans/Maps where you can observe all locations have been removed. As for now, it is hard to conclude anything but this looks like a bug (I know I am being optimistic).
This is quite normal for politics-related news on HN. Many people flag them and they disappear from the FP. Whatever contentious issue you take, there always people who will dislike an even or how it's presented and will flag the submission.
However, a quick search reveals at least a few people claiming that Apple Maps has always been empty for Lebanon outside of major cities (and at least one commenter says they are Lebanese):
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1sjmrol/comment/oft1...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1sjoxqo/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1sjo66s/apple_maps...
https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/1sjou17/apple_maps...
I don't know how trustworthy these comments are, but I don't see anyone contradicting them.
So it's definitely not clear this has anything to do with the current war.
https://x.com/hezbolsonaro/status/1310354231795171328
Still odd because OSM has all these towns and Apple appears to be using the OSM street network, but not showing the labels
From wikipedia:
> In October 2024, IDF forces operated in the village as part of its invasion of southern Lebanon. The Israeli flag was raised, after the victory.
Which Apple might use as a justification. There is a Israeli flag, so it must belong to them.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroun_al-Ras
[1]: https://maps.apple.com/frame?center=33.107500%2C35.444722&sp...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742363
Only Syria is an exception: there, it was internal Druze pressure on the Israeli government to act to protect their brothers in Syria.
Israel instead should be a democracy with equal rights for all subject to its rule instead of an oppressive, expansionist, Jewish-supremacist state.
Israel’s existence by violence is the source of the problem. Israel’s dismantlement is the answer.
So, which reply will you go with? They started it? Or maybe “you expect us to just give terrorists equal rights?”
2. Israel is attacked to be dismantled
3. Israel wins
4. "Israel’s existence by violence is the source of the problem"
5. Goto 1
I'm not sure why they would do this for US users unless the US government requested it.
I think the Onion did a piece saying something like "Netanyahu dead, Trump must go back to being the only president of the United States", and while satire, is a bit enlightening of the actual situation here.
TMK there is no current government order to eliminate large swaths of Lebanon from maps. So the fact that Apple is doing this (seemingly on its own, despite all other mapping services reflecting the original place names) is the thing I'm explicitly calling out as being weird.
Oh honey…
And most towns seem missing, including in areas Israel has never bombed.
It keeps blowing me away how brain dead the internet can be.
Because the US govt. is petty and vindictive at the moment.
And has been for many, many years.
And I’m not just talking about Apple Maps.
> I don’t understand why it is allowed to continue.
The answer is even sadder. It's even worse. And it is as follows: because there's not enough people who are taking action, and from those taking action there's not enough people in power to change something significantly. At least that's how I see it. And... I can't even blame those who don't take action - because many people feel completely powerless, they feel like "what you can do to stop this war/other thing if you're just a regular human?"
It passed via bypartisan vote well in time before US launched the illegal invasion of Iraq in which it committed various war crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
You mean the ICC, not the ICJ. The latter is a separate body that handles disputes between states.
Both have warrants for arrest by the ICC but note that neither Putin nor Netanyahu have been tried or convicted by the International Criminal Court.
I’ve wondered, in the immediate aftermath of his recent genocidal threats, whether Mr. Trump was feeling left out of that club.
EDIT: I'm at -2 for stating a fact.
Bing: https://www.bing.com/maps?cp=33.185932%7E35.321974&lvl=11.9&...
Google: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.1649913,35.2506666,11.55z
OSM: https://www.openstreetbrowser.org/#map=11/33.1554/35.2890
If you look at the Apple Maps satellite layer, you see thousands of structures spread across the area.
It is a reasonable assumption that these population centers were labeled and Apple (or one of its data partners) has withdrawn the labels.
Just linking to a map doesn't tell us what was removed or when.
So it's clear that it was there and is no longer there. I'm not making a judgement as to why it's no longer there (the post on X makes an unsubstantiated claim that it's intentional). Could be a bug for all I know. I'm unwilling to make the leap that it's some malicious attempt without actual evidence. I can only verify that it no longer has a label.
The obvious interpretation—that they've been removed for political reasons connected to the current war—would require knowing all 3 of these, and we don't know those things yet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744840
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744594
You can open the link and see it for yourself; what other "verification" do you need?
ps. your domain is misconfigured for your website, the www prefix is missing so only b....org works, but the link in your HN bio, doesn't.
I agree with you that it isn't clear what's going on here. People are giving it an interpretation that feels obvious given the current context, and we don't yet know whether this interpretation is true.
Usually the obvious interpretation of an isolated internet factoid turns out not to be true.
This genocide of course involves deleting those villages.
Why is Yemen, Iran, Sudan and Ukraine still mapped then?
In the area between the Israeli border and the Litani river (another river further south), the IDF is destroying all villages and has destroyed most of the bridges over the river, effectively isolating the area from the rest of Lebanon. All of that "smells" like annexation.
It seems Apple is doing preemptive compliance with the Israeli government here, by already erasing the destroyed villages from the map.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps
Could it be that their data source is tied to satellite data that is now being blacked out?
It could be that they have a provider in Lebanon that was bombed but I’ve never heard of a cartographer with local dependencies like that.
'Greater Israel' is just the 21st Century version of Nazi Germany's 'Lebensraum'.
But given who their closest ally is, many more people have to die before that wretched country finds a healthier way forward.
All my solidarity to the Jewish people that disavow any connection with the state of Israel. Your voices aren’t loud enough.
Ironically, this is actually antisemitic.
https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/anti-israel-policies-are-ant...
"The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations."
"The demolitions came after Israel’s minister of defence, Israel Katz, called for the destruction of “all houses” in border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” to stop threats to communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military destroyed 90% of homes in Rafah, in south Gaza."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/12/how-israeli-of...
https://xcancel.com/EthanLevins2/status/2043386231900262610#...
In one of the replies, he says "all you people care about is money".
This is a well known racist anti semitic trope. He even uses the phrase "you people." Shameful.
But it's in line with the pro-Israel pattern of putting words into peoples' mouth or simply asserting that certain terms are "codes" that mean something different than what the speaker actually said.
Quick: someone do the graphic, you can sell merch. Mail a freebie and a purchase link to every makerspace on the planet.
Some interesting background to current hostilities: "The UN Security Council has voted to wind up the near 50 year UNIFIL [peace keeping] mission after lobbying from Israel pushed the United States to veto its renewal. The mission will end in 2027." https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2025/08/un...
Just read it:
“Apple buys Israeli ‘pre-speech’ tech firm implicated in Gaza genocide” https://thegrayzone.com/2026/02/15/apple-buys-israeli-pre-sp...
And, of course, this post is flagged…because who know who run Y Combinator!