AISH: The Systematic Erasure of Jewish History

 

From museums to maps to Wikipedia, Jewish history is being rewritten, and silence is allowing falsehood to harden into fact.

In December, the Royal Ontario Museum made a quiet but telling change to its labeling system. Ancient artifacts from Judea, the historical Jewish kingdom that existed centuries before the Common Era, are now described as "Palestinian." The switch is more than a curatorial adjustment. It's historical revisionism, and it's part of a broader pattern of erasing Jewish identity and Jewish connections to the past.

Soviet Erasure and the Universalization of Jewish Death

This isn't the first time such erasure has happened. During the Soviet era, the USSR deliberately obscured the specific targeting of Jews during the Holocaust. While millions of Soviets died in what they called the Great Patriotic War, the regime refused to acknowledge that Jews were singled out for extermination by the Nazis. At Babyn Yar, where nearly 34,000 Jews were murdered in two days, the Soviet memorial made no mention of Jewish victims. The suffering was universalized, the identity erased. It took decades before the Jewish dimension of the tragedy was officially recognized.

Teaching Children a Map Without Israel

The pattern continues today in different forms. Encyclopedia Britannica, a reference work trusted by generations of students and educators, removed Israel from maps in its Britannica Kids platform, labeling the entire area "Palestine" instead. This wasn't a footnote or a contested historical interpretation. It was a contemporary map of the Middle East, teaching children that a sovereign nation recognized by the United Nations and most of the world's countries simply doesn't exist. (Today it was announced that Encyclopedia Britannica has amended its website for kids following a complaint from UK Lawyers for Israel.)

The message to young readers is clear: Israel's presence is erasable, its existence negotiable. More than that it seems to fully buy into the eliminationist call to cleanse Israel of Jews “from the River (Jordan) to the (Mediterranean) Sea.”

Removing Jews from Public Memory

In Dublin there was a recent attempt to rename a park honoring Chaim Herzog, who served as Israel's sixth president. Herzog was born in Belfast, and his father was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland. His connection to Ireland was deep and personal. Yet his legacy became contested not because of who he was, but because of what he represented. The effort to strip his name from the park was about denying Jewish historical figures their place in public memory when their stories are intertwined with Israel.

Destroying the Physical Evidence of Jewish History

Then there's the physical destruction of Jewish heritage. The Palestinian Authority has engaged in what can be called archaeological terrorism, deliberately destroying remnants of ancient Jewish sites. Near Shechem, the altar traditionally associated with Joshua was damaged in an apparent attempt to erase evidence of Jewish presence in the land. At Joseph's Tomb, repeated vandalism and arson have occurred. These are coordinated efforts to eliminate the physical proof of Jewish history in places where that history is inconvenient to a political narrative.

Wikipedia and the Digital Rewriting of the Past

Perhaps the most insidious form of this erasure happens online, where history is supposedly democratized and accessible to all. Wikipedia, which positions itself as a neutral source of information, has become a battleground. Entries related to Jewish history, the Temple Mount, ancient Judea, and the broader Jewish connection to the Land of Israel have been systematically rewritten. Pro-Palestinian editors work to decouple Jewish history from the land, replace established historical consensus with fringe theories, and present opinion as fact.

The result is a narrative that lionizes the Arab and Palestinian perspective while erasing or marginalizing the Jewish one. For many people, especially younger generations who rely on Wikipedia as a primary source, this rewritten history becomes the only history they know.

Why Jewish Erasure Is Uniquely Tolerated

What ties all these examples together is the uncomfortable reality that erasing Jewish identity is often seen as acceptable, even necessary, in service of other goals. Whether it's Soviet ideology that couldn't accommodate Jewish particularity, educational publishers that can't show Israel on a map, Irish politics that couldn't tolerate association with Israel, Palestinian nationalism that requires the land to have always been exclusively Arab, progressive politics that views Jewish success as problematic, or online activism that treats Jewish historical claims as colonialism, the pattern is the same. Jewish history is rewritten, minimized, or eliminated.

The Cost of Letting Lies Stand

The consequences are real. When museums mislabel artifacts, they teach falsehoods. When educational platforms erase countries, they shape how children understand the world. When memorials omit Jewish victims, they distort history. When holy sites are destroyed, the evidence of Jewish civilization disappears. When the contributions of Jewish individuals are ignored, their stories are lost. When Wikipedia rewrites the past, millions absorb propaganda as truth.

Jewish history and Jewish identity deserve the same respect and accuracy afforded to others. These facts can coexist with other facts, including the painful realities of Palestinian displacement and suffering. History is complex and honesty requires holding multiple truths at once. But complexity is not an excuse for erasure. You cannot build a just future on a foundation of lies about the past.

This concerted erasure will continue as long as it's tolerated. Silence is complicity, and anyone who claims to value truth must confront and defeat the deliberate rewriting of Jewish history.

https://aish.com/the-systematic-erasure-of-jewish-history/?src=ac

**************

Readers Respond:

This is for the troll that was deleted while I was writing my reply to her:

1. "Hamas are just noble freedom fighters"-Because nothing says 'liberation' like kidnapping grandmothers and firing rockets from schools!
2. "Palestine is an ancient state that has always existed"-It’s the only 'ancient kingdom' in history that left behind zero archeology, zero ruins, and zero records until the 20th century
3. "The Palestinian people only want peace"-If you redefine 'peace' to include suicide bombings, 'Pay-for-Slay' salaries for terrorists, and rejecting every two-state solution ever offered
4. "Jews are European colonizers"-Because apparently, 3,000 years of archeology, DNA, and history were all fabricated by Mossad

But hey, don't let a few pesky things called 'facts' get in your way!

************

It looks like the world likes the Nazi ( Y"S) propaganda that Joseph Gobbels ( Y"S) the propaganda minister of Nazi ( Y"S) Germany used, and said" if you tell a lie lots of times people will think it is the truth" and what this article says proves the point, and sadly some gullible and ignorant people don't know the truth, unfortunately not everyone learns history like the religious Jewish people do, and I heard they might of dropped history in schools, it is important to teach the truth or else, the lies and falsehoods will take over, we must sue or do something to stop this erasure, this must be paid by Muslim oil and gold money, to better to steal the identity of the Jewish people, legally it is called identity theft, according to the why I see it,

************

The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, https://www.jewish-american-society-for-historic-preservation.org/, is the only organization in the world that is actively creating, placing, and preserving Jewish memory. To date, they have completed Jewish-themed historical markers and projects in 44 States and in nine countries. Annually, over 7,000,000 people see and benefit from one of their efforts. JASHP is a small organization with a very big footprint. To their chagrin, they have been and are ignored by mainstream Jewish organizations. A fact they disregard. The mission to create, reaffirm, and tell the story of the Jewish people is paramount.

************

In Poland the Polish government are trying to whitewashing their involvement in the Holocaust, you can go to jail if you mention that Poland had any involvement in the Holocaust, so the Muslims are trying to erase Jews and Kewish history, when artifacts are found in Israel the Muslims in Israel try to destroy the evidence the Jews were the inherited of the land

************

These erasures also deprive future generations of real history. History should not be written by the winners. The US is about to celebrate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. Our children have the right to know about the events leading up to the war and the participation of people other than white men who fought on both sides. The same is true of Jewish history. If it were not horrifying, I would laugh at the idiots who chant “from the river to the sea” but don’t know which bodies of water are referenced.

************

The large big-pocketed jewish organizations (the ADL, AJC, the federations, etc ) have forfeited any claim to Jewish support or the right to claim to speak for Jewish interests, as they are silent and/or impotent whenever issues such as this arise. They have been missing in action for decades. Don't give them a penny! Call them out!