[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BritishMuseum.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Palestinian ambassador to the UK has called on the government to aid in getting the British Museum to reinstate the word \u201cPalestinian\u201d in its wall texts.<\/p>\n
\n\tHusam Zomlot, the ambassador, raised his complaint to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, a ministry of foreign affairs, according to the Guardian<\/em>. In that Guardian<\/em> report, Zomlot called the removal of \u201cPalestinian\u201d from the labels a form of \u201cerasure.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn February, the Telegraph<\/em> reported that the group UK Lawyers for Israel had lobbied the museum to strip the word from its didactics, claiming that using the word \u201cPalestinian\u201d \u201cerases historical changes and creates a false impression of continuity.\u201d The word had appeared on maps of the Middle East at the museum.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor the Middle East galleries for maps showing ancient cultural regions, the term \u2018Canaan\u2019 is relevant for the southern Levant in the later second millennium BC,\u201d a museum spokesperson previously said. \u201cWe use the UN terminology on maps that show modern boundaries, for example Gaza, West Bank, Israel, Jordan, and refer to \u2018Palestinian\u2019 as a cultural or ethnographic identifier where appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking to the Guardian<\/em> this week, the museum further denied that it had removed the word \u201cPalestinian\u201d from its wall texts and said that the term continues to appear elsewhere in the institution and on its website. The Guardian<\/em>, however, noted that this statement \u201cappeared to conflict with the photographic proof of changes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tZomlot told the Guardian<\/em> that he had turned down with a tour of the British Museum with director Nicholas Cullinan because he believed it would not have led to concrete changes.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cFor me, this is not only a political issue. This is not only a legal issue. This is not even just a historical issue. This is an existential issue,\u201d Zomlot told the Guardian<\/em>. \u201cBecause erasing our past is erasing our present.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/british-museum-uk-palestinian-ambassador-erasure-1234784231\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/BritishMuseum.jpg?w=1024″] The Palestinian ambassador to the UK has called on the government to aid in getting the British Museum to reinstate the word \u201cPalestinian\u201d in its wall texts. Husam Zomlot, the ambassador, raised his complaint to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, a ministry of foreign affairs, according to the Guardian. In that Guardian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1924410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1924410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1924410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1924410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1924410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1924410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}