Israel is trying to rewrite ancient history. In Palestine, Israel has systematically destroyed ancient heritage and made colonial land grabs of archaeological sites like the ancient Palestinian town of Sebastia, near Nablus. Beyond Palestine, global institutions \u2013 including museums and universities \u2013 are at risk of aiding and abetting them in this rewriting project. Yesterday UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) announced that they had written to the British Museum to encourage them to remove references to \u2018Palestine\u2019 in the gallery panels and labels of their collections. I recognised UKLFI\u2019s ideological mission immediately: they were trying to recruit the British Museum to their political project of erasing Palestinian history.<\/p>\n
The reason I could identify UKLFI\u2019s project so quickly was that a few short weeks earlier my own university had been the target of their political campaign to manufacture a pro-Israel narrative of history.<\/p>\n
UKLFI had written to The Open University in the UK, where I work, requesting that the term \u201cancient Palestine\u201d be removed from our teaching materials. <\/p>\n
Their letter made a series of ill-informed arguments dripping with thinly veiled Zionism, including that the term \u2018ancient Palestine\u2019 is historically inaccurate to describe the region associated with the Virgin Mary (the context in which the term was being used in The Open University\u2019s learning materials). UKLFI suggested that the use of the term \u2018ancient Palestine\u2019 might erase Jewish historical identity and create a hostile environment for Jewish students. None of this could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n
READ:\u00a0British Museum removes the word \u2018Palestine\u2019 from displays following pressure by pro-Israel lawyers<\/a><\/p>\n The term \u2018ancient Palestine\u2019 is simply the most accurate term for this region in antiquity. It was used in the 5th century BCE by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, and remains widely used in academic research including my own and that of the vast majority of scholars of the ancient world that I know. <\/p>\n The idea that \u2018Palestine\u2019 is a late-coming or illegitimate way to refer to this region in antiquity is a Zionist lie.<\/p>\n It is circulated by pro-Israel organisations not because it adds anything to historical discussions of this region, but because it supports Israel\u2019s claim that Palestinians are illegitimate and presents Jewish supremacy in the region as ancient history rather than modern invention. And it is a lie that is complicit in Israel\u2019s genocidal project of erasing not just contemporary Palestinian life, but historical traces of the Palestinians too.<\/p>\n The rewriting of ancient history has always played an important role in occupation and genocide. European colonisers have often manufactured stories about ancient history to support their projects of settler colonialism. When the British coloniser Cecil Rhodes wanted to occupy Zimbabwe (which he would call Rhodesia), he sent archaeologists to the ruins of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe. These archaeologists were responsible for manufacturing the fairytale that it was not ancient Africans who built this site, but the ancient Phoenicians. This narrative was useful to the British, who would subsequently argue that the Phoenicians were ancient Europeans whose colonial presence legitimated their own. And when France wanted to colonise Algeria it told a similar colonial story: that the French were the true legitimate occupiers of Algeria, because they were \u2013 so they said \u2013 descended from the ancient Romans who had occupied Algeria centuries earlier.<\/p>\n It is not surprising that Zionism, itself a project of European colonialism, should tell similar colonial fairytales about ancient history. European colonialism systemically rewrote history to justify the dehumanisation of colonised populations \u2013 especially when those colonised populations were in the majority Muslim, because of the fact that Islam began in the 7th century, after the end of the so-called \u2018classical\u2019 world. The destruction of archaeological sites in Palestine is a clear attempt to rewrite ancient history in this same vein, in order to justify Israeli occupation. But these acts of violence and destruction alone are not enough to manufacture the historical narrative required for genocide. Historians, museums and universities all function as necessary accomplices to the political project that Israel is engaging in. And they are recruited to this ideological project by organisations like UKLFI.<\/p>\n READ:\u00a0The controversial UKLFI raises \u2018safeguarding and equality\u2019 concerns over keffiyeh worn at Scout meeting<\/a><\/p>\n Legal protections of academic freedom and freedom of speech ought to ensure the right of academics to use accurate terminology. They ought to ensure the protection of this right even in the face of political pressure coming from those for whom the facts of history are inconvenient. Israel\u2019s attempt to rewrite history is therefore also a dangerous attack on academic freedom. <\/p>\n