The British Museum removed references to Palestine in samples from Egypt

The British Museum removed references to Palestine from its exhibits on ancient Egypt and the Phoenicians, saying the word was “not significant.” The change came after the venue received a letter from the group United Kingdom Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), the Middle East Eye site reported.

According to that portal, in its letter to Nicholas Cullinan, director of the museum, the UKLFI argued that the use of the term Palestine “has the multiplying effect of erasing the kingdoms of Israel and Judea” and “rethinking the origins of the Israelites and the Jewish people as if they wrongly originated in Palestine.”

The group specifically objected to labels on exhibits covering the period 1700-1500 BC that referred to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean as “Palestine” and described the Hyksos people as being of “Palestinian descent.” Now they have changed to “Canaan” and “Canaanite descendants.”

In this regard, the group Energy Embargo for Palestine noted that the site, “after looting Palestinian artifacts throughout the Middle East, is now preparing without reluctance to rewrite history, to erase Palestine and its millions of people from the history books.”

Academics and campaigners told portal Middle East Eye that the British Museum is one of a number of public institutions, including local councils and hospitals, that are being targeted by the UKLFI.

Earlier this month, the Encyclopedia Britannica modified several entries Britannica Kids related to Palestine, including the removal of the term from maps of the region, following pressure from UKLFI.

In February 2023, London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital removed a piece of art made by children in Gaza. UKLFI director Caroline Turner said the move was taken in response to patient complaints. However, a freedom of information request forced the hospital to admit that the only complaint made was from UKLFI.

Last January, the Open University also capitulated to the group’s demand to remove the term “ancient Palestine” from its future learning materials and to include warnings on existing content on the grounds that it is newly “problematic”.

A forthcoming database compiled by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) documents 900 incidents of anti-Palestinian repression in the UK between January 2019 and August 2025; It found that UKLFI appears in 128 of those cases, “either as a direct actor of repression or as a facilitating actor, whose actions incite workplaces, universities and other institutions to further repress solidarity with Palestine.”

Giovanni Fassina, chief executive of ELSC, said UKLFI’s attack on the British Museum is “not surprising” and is part of a “very clear pattern” the group has followed in recent years. “We demonstrate that UKLFI begins these attacks by sending letters threatening legal action or alleging breaches of UK law,” he added.

For her part, Marchella Ward, professor of classical studies at the Open University in the United Kingdom, highlighted that institutions that give in to pressure “aid and abet the genocide of the Palestinians by agreeing to erase their history.

“The rewriting of history has always played an important role in the occupation and genocide. In Palestine itself this is manifested in colonization and the destruction of archaeological sites,” the academic added.

During the attacks on Gaza, Israeli forces have totally or partially destroyed more than 316 archaeological sites and buildings, most of which date from the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, and others from the early Islamic centuries and the Byzantine period.