I'll probably get labeled a "hater" for this, but why would Apple release a product, heavily marketed towards travelers, that is not approved for use everywhere? At least warn people that it may not be legal to operate in other countries while those approvals are pending. Did they really think that these things would not leave the US?

It sounds pretty bone-headed, but there are a few options. There are ~190 countries in the world; they may not have checked the regulations in all of them. They may have been aware of the issue in Israel and hoped to pressure the Israeli authorities to speed up their approval process through negative publicity. And I would bet that there's (very) fine print in the iPad documentation that disclaims any responsibility if other gov'ts refuse to allow operation.

I was involved with a radio project here in Australia some years ago where the product complied with the US FCC regs but not with local Aussie regs. I had to teach a few otherwise intelligent people that the FCC has no authority in Australia. The prevailing attitude was "eventually Australia will align with the US on this" and eventually they (and the rest of the world) did.

Damn straight. Hey, if they want to know the right way, a question wouldn't hurt. We like to talk about ourselves and our godlike omniscience.

According to AFP News sources, the ban has now been reversed.