British Museum releases lobbying letters over ‘Palestine,’ withholds its own records

The British Museum released letters to Urgent Matter showing the Board of Deputies of British Jews privately pressed it to remove the word “Palestine” from its ancient Egypt and Phoenician displays.

But it withheld the internal document and legal advice that would reveal how the museum handled that pressure. Its response also addressed the “audience testing” cited in February 2026 to justify altering the displays.

The Board of Deputies correspondence, released as an appendix with staff names redacted, includes two letters. In July, Middle East Eye reported that the Board’s complaint to the museum “has yet to be disclosed,” based on redacted internal emails rather than the letters themselves.

In the 2023 letter, a Board vice president wrote that community members had raised concerns about “the mislabelling of a number of maps in the Egyptian Collection at the British Museum.”

Paid subscribers can read the British Museum's full response.

FOIA Documents: British Museum ‘Palestine’ display records

The British Museum’s 18 September 2026 response to FOI_26115, with the disclosed Board of Deputies correspondence.

Urgent MatterAdam Schrader

“The maps in question, titled ‘The age of empire’ and ‘The Ramessides’, misrepresent the history of the area by labelling the land that is now the State of Israel as ‘Palestine’,” the vice president wrote. “This is historically incorrect and would seem to be the insertion of a current political viewpoint.”

The letter said an objective description “would not refer to the area as either ‘Palestine’ or ‘Israel’, but rather as ‘Canaan’.”

The December 2024 follow-up objected to a panel reading, “By the beginning of the first millennium BC the Israelites occupied most of Palestine except for the southern coastal strip.”

“In the first millennium BCE, this area was not known as Palestine,” the letter said. “As you will know, the name Palestine was not used until the British rule in 1917.”

The Board asked the museum to replace “Palestine” with “Philistia” or “Canaan,” to replace the word “occupied” with “was home to,” and to stop using the term “Israelites” in favor of “the Jewish people or Jews.”

“Calling the land Palestine, long before it was recognised as such, suggests that the British Museum refuses to recognise the history of Israel and the Jewish people, as well as ignoring Jews’ origins in the land,” the letter said.

The follow-up also quoted the reply the museum’s own Middle East department had given to a member of the public.

“The British Museum’s use of the term ‘Palestine’ is well-established in Western and Middle Eastern scholarship to refer to this historic region, without particular reference to individual cultural groups or political entities that have developed in the region in the past or more recently,” the department’s reply said, as quoted in the Board’s letter.

The Board told the museum that answer was “not satisfactory,” and closed by asking the museum “to correct this incorrect terminology and misleading information as soon as possible.”

The museum would not release the document linking the complaints to the panels. Urgent Matter had asked for a Word document, referenced in a December 6, 2024 internal email, listing the Room 4 panels using “Palestine” alongside specific quotations and “suggested alternative wording.”

The museum confirmed the document exists but withheld it under a Freedom of Information Act exemption for information whose disclosure would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.

That exemption requires the opinion of a designated “qualified person.” The museum’s response said its qualified person is museum director Nicholas Cullinan, and that he gave his opinion on September 11, 2026, that the exemption was engaged.

The museum argued there was “very little public interest in the disclosure of this specific document, which was an informal draft document and did not form the basis of any decision making.”

The museum said disclosing such working documents “would prejudice the ability of staff at all levels to express and explore ideas in a safe space.”

Urgent Matter also asked for records the museum created since July 1, 2026, about Middle East Eye’s reporting on the display changes and about the calls by Members of Parliament for an investigation.

The museum said it holds records about Middle East Eye's reporting but is withholding them under an exemption for legal professional privilege. It said releasing them “would betray legal professional privilege,” and that the museum must be able to “receive full, frank and uninhibited legal advice.” It said it holds no records of the parliamentary calls for an investigation.

A British Museum spokesperson said in February that audience testing had shown the historic use of the term "Palestine" was "in some circumstances no longer meaningful," in a response UK Lawyers for Israel published on its website.

Urgent Matter asked for any record underpinning the “audience testing” cited in the February statement, along with records showing who authored and approved that statement.

“While we do not currently hold records of specific audience testing research on the term ‘Palestine’, a body of research, carried out over many years, has found that visitors struggle to understand historic geographical terms used by scholars,” the museum said.

It said the term “Palestine” is “well established” in scholarship as a designation for the southern Levant “since the nineteenth century,” but visitors “may be more likely to associate the term with the modern state of Palestine today.” It withheld staff names under section 40, the personal-data exemption.

Middle East Eye reported on July 1 that a separate FOI disclosure to that outlet had confirmed no such testing on the term “Palestine” was carried out. It reported that the museum holds an “extensive archive” of audience-testing reports but none relating to the term.

Urgent Matter also asked for any records identifying planned changes to the Egypt and Ancient Levant galleries under the museum’s Masterplan that concern the terms “Palestine,” “Palestinian,” “Canaan,” “Canaanite” or “Israelite.” The request quoted an internal museum email of December 18, 2025 stating that “the Masterplan will see our interpretation updated.”

The museum said it holds no such records.

The September disclosure follows earlier releases Urgent Matter previously reported, which included the replacement of a panel in the Phoenicians gallery and internal complaints that the word “occupied” was “politically charged.”

Those earlier documents were the subject of a separate dispute. On July 22, Urgent Matter asked the museum to review redactions in an April 2026 disclosure, FOI_26021, arguing the public interest had shifted due to parliamentary calls, a complaint from the Palestinian ambassador, and reporting on audience testing.

The museum refused the review, saying the original April request was not submitted by Urgent Matter and the 40-working-day window to request a review had passed.

The museum also took an extension on Urgent Matter’s request. In an August 19 email, it said it needed more time to consider the public interest in the section 36 and 42 exemptions.

In its July 1 investigation, Middle East Eye reported that the museum removed the terms “Palestine,” “Palestinian” and “Israelite occupation” from displays “in direct response to months of lobbying in 2024,” and that the museum and Cullinan had misled prominent critics.

Several reported changes correspond to the Board’s requests. A reference to “rulers of Palestinian descent” was changed to “rulers of Canaanite origin.” The Board had asked for “Palestine” to be changed to “Canaan.”

The Phoenicians panel the Board quoted, which read that “the Israelites occupied most of Palestine,” was among the displays altered, The Art Newspaper reported. The Board had asked the museum to drop the word “occupied,” and Urgent Matter previously reported internal museum complaints that “occupied” had become “politically charged.”

The museum’s response does not show whether it adopted the Board’s request to replace “Israelites” with “Jews.” A British Museum spokesperson told Middle East Eye it was “simply not true” that the museum had removed the term.

“We continue to use Palestine across a series of galleries, both contemporary and historic,” the spokesperson said.

Cullinan has described the changes as the result of curatorial work. Historian William Dalrymple said on social media that Cullinan had telephoned him to say curators “had thought long and hard” about the wording, that the changes were made during a gallery refresh the previous year, “before the complaint was raised,” and that Cullinan told him he “had not seen the complaint.”

The changes prompted cross-party calls for an investigation.

Green MP Sian Berry called the findings “deeply troubling” and said an independent investigation should be launched to determine whether “political interference has occurred.”

Labour MP Richard Burgon said there must be an investigation “into who authorised these changes, why they were made, and whether the Museum misled the public.” Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn described the erasures as “anti-Palestinian racism.”

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, told Middle East Eye the removal of references to Palestine was “absolutely existential for us.”

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