Kiryat Yam: Google claims city was built on Arab village

An Israeli town is suing Internet giant Google for slander, a local official said Monday, because a feature of its worldwide map service shows the town was built on the ruins of an Arab village. The dispute brings together two controversies, one old and one new. Officials from the town, Kiryat Yam, deny they displaced Arabs during the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948, and Google is defending the practice of allowing any surfer to change information in its files. Kiryat Yam is a town of 40,000 on the Mediterranean coast just north of the port of Haifa. An entry on Google Earth, a feature that allows users to zero in on locations around the world, alleges that the town was built on the ruins of Ghawarina, an Arab village.