Absurd!

Encyclopaedia Britannica has been accused of erasing Israel from its educational material for children.

Supporters of Israel say the Jewish state was removed and replaced with Palestine on a map of the region published by the encyclopaedia’s Britannica Kids edition.

The legal lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote to the US publishers of Encyclopaedia Britannica demanding it make urgent revisions to its material.

One of its chief concerns was a map which showed a mass of land it defined as Palestine covering the area of Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

UKLFI accused Encyclopaedia Britannica of promoting the controversial “from the river to the sea” definition of Palestine.

The caption for the map stated in the present tense: “The name Palestine refers to a region in the Middle East. The region lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

The map made no distinction between the state of Israel and the neighbouring West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, which are generally considered to be the borders of the State of Palestine recognised by the UK Government and others.

Another entry in the Britannia Kids material reads: “The name Palestine has long been in popular use as a general term to denote a traditional region, but this usage does not imply precise boundaries. The perception of what constitutes Palestine’s eastern boundary has been especially fluid, although the boundary frequently has been perceived as lying east of the Jordan River, extending at times to the edge of the Arabian Desert.

“In contemporary understanding, however, Palestine is generally defined as a region bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the north by the border between modern Israel and Lebanon, on the west by the Mediterranean Sea (including the coast of Gaza), and on the south by the Negev, with its southernmost extension reaching the Gulf of Aqaba.”

UKLFI claimed these definitions echoed pro-Palestine “from the river to the sea” slogans widely interpreted as calling for the destruction of Israel and denying the right of Jews to their own state, though others dispute that meaning and the phrase is not banned in the UK.

In its letter to Encyclopaedia Britannica, UKLFI stated: “These descriptions effectively erase the existence of Israel, which in fact lies between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean sea. By defining Palestine as extending uninterrupted from the river to the sea, the entries closely mirror the language and geographic framing of contemporary activist slogans such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’.

“This phrase has been widely used as a rallying cry for Palestinian terrorist groups and is contained in the 2017 charter of the Hamas terrorist group, which led the October 7 attacks on Israel.”

UKLFI added: “Presenting the area extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine is therefore not only historically inaccurate and offensive but also implies that Britannica is seeking to make a modern political statement.”

After being contacted by The Telegraph on Wednesday, the map of Palestine which UKLFI said had erased the existence of Israel appeared to have been removed by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The definition of Palestine as extending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean sea was also amended to include the line: “Today the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are located within this area.”

UKLFI was alerted to the apparent inaccuracies by Shari Black, a 41-year-old London-based children’s book writer and editor who first complained to Encyclopaedia Britannica about them in November 2024.

In their response the publisher told her that “the editorial team will certainly review this”, though she was not informed of any changes it planned to make.

Ms Black, who is Jewish and has family in Israel, told The Telegraph: “Accuracy is really important when you’re writing books for children and I was surprised that such a respected website would publish historical inaccuracies like this.

“It pushes a certain agenda, an erasure of Israel, a delegitimisation of the country – even though it was established by international consensus.”

Britannica Kids also uses the term Palestine as the name of the entire region stretching back thousands of years.

But some historians have questioned this definition, saying it risks denying the centuries-long Jewish connection with the area now making up the state of Israel.