From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   What’s in a name? Quite a bit if you’re the British Museum and the   
   P-word is involved: ‘Palestine’. Pro-Palestinian activists are outraged   
   – it is Monday, after all – because the museum has altered its   
   terminology. Representatives of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) objected   
   to displays in the British taxpayer-funded institution giving the name   
   ‘Palestine’ to the historical land now home to Israel, Gaza and Judea   
   and Samaria (the West Bank). They pointed out that these territories   
   went by various names over the centuries, including Canaan, Israel and   
   Judah, and that using only ‘Palestine’ is a) historically inaccurate and   
   b) plays into highly contested modern-day Palestinian political narratives.   
      
   Since ‘Palestinian’ is now associated exclusively with Arabs, where a   
   century ago it was routinely used to refer to Jews, the concern is that   
   these displays reinforce the misconception that the land between the   
   Mediterranean and the Jordan was home to a single continuous nation or   
   culture that endured for centuries or even millennia. In fact, the   
   territory repeatedly changed hands, usually as the possession or   
   protectorate of a conquering empire, and the only extant civilisation to   
   be an independent sovereign in this strip of hills and deserts and   
   water-starved fields were the Jews.   
      
   Anti-Zionists often downplay, ignore or even deny this part of the   
   historical record because it debunks their claim that the Palestinians,   
   as we understand them today, were a sovereign nation on the land until   
   the Jews arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries   
   and supplanted an indigenous people. In truth, there has been a   
   continuous Jewish presence in the land, even following the Roman   
   Republic’s defeat of the Hasmoneans in 63 BCE, subsequent conquest of   
   Judea, and enslavement or expulsion of many of its Jewish citizens.   
      
   We started out in Culture War of the Week, 2026, and somehow ended up   
   halfway across the world in the time before Christ, and I don’t blame   
   those of you who quit the tour and handed back your headphones along the   
   way. Do people really get worked up about this stuff? They do. What’s   
   more, they should. Our regard for the history of past civilisations is a   
   good barometer for the regard in which we treat our own. Truth either   
   matters or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, why are we bothering?   
   Incidentally, the truth involves acknowledging that, while the   
   propagandistic mythologies peddled by pro-Palestinian activists distort   
   history in service of ideology, so too do those Zionist   
   counter-narratives that attempt to write out the Arabs altogether to   
   justify the domination or expulsion of contemporary Palestinians.   
      
   In some ways, the pro-Palestinian movement is hoist by its own petard:   
   in pushing for recognition of ‘Palestine’ as a state it has embedded the   
   modern definition in the public consciousness, so that the historic   
   term, highly useful for propaganda purposes among the general public,   
   must be deployed more cautiously to guard against misrepresenting history.   
      
   The British Museum has replaced some references to ‘Palestine’ and   
   ‘Palestinian’ with ‘Canaan’ and ‘Canaanite’, but UKLFI says that   
   the   
   work and financial cost involved mean further changes will be carried   
   out ‘in phases over the coming years as part of the museum’s long-term   
   “Masterplan” redevelopment’. (An unfortunate name when facing charges of   
   having erased Jews from history.)   
      
   Something about this rankles, though. The ideological rewriting of   
   history is offensive to opponents of the progressive movement, but isn’t   
   lawfare just as objectionable, exactly the kind of cry-bully   
   finger-wagging progressives unleash to get their way? This is the   
   paradox of lanyard legalism: can the procedural tools of coercive   
   progressivism – lawfare, language-policing, institutional and policy   
   capture – legitimately be used to counter progressive ideology? Are   
   those who long for the Before Times merely fighting to restore   
   institutional neutrality, or are they also battling against a culture of   
   politically mandated compliance?   
      
   It’s a genuine dilemma but those troubled by it must contend with an   
   equally legitimate, and more practical, point: a culture war in which   
   only one side is prepared to fight isn’t a culture war, but a series of   
   merciless onslaughts met by agonised self-restraint. Noble defeat is   
   still defeat. Defending civilisation in the present means defending it   
   in the past, too.   
      
      
   Stephen Daisley   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)