After complaints, Encyclopaedia Britannica edits kids’ entries that erased Israel

Encyclopaedia Britannica appears to have edited a number of entries on its children’s website after a British pro-Israel organization raised concerns last week about the erasure of Israel in maps and articles.

UK Lawyers for Israel issued a statement last Sunday flagging “repeated examples” of entries on the Britannica Kids website “in which Israel is effectively erased from history — both geographically and historically.”

A archived snapshot from September 2025 of the site’s “Palestine” entry designed for students in grades 6-8 has a lead image of a map that labels the area as Palestine with no mention of Israel, and no caption giving any date or context.

On the live version of the entry in question on Sunday, the map has been removed, and replaced with an image of olive groves. The photo itself still exists on the Britannica Kids site, with a caption reading: “The name Palestine refers to a region in the Middle East. The region lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

In addition, on the entry for “Palestine” that the site designates as being for young “scholars” — those in high school — an archived version of the site from October 2025 asserts that modern Palestine “is generally defined as a region bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the north by the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.” The same wording had also been on the site at least as far back as 2022.

The live version of the same entry on Sunday had been edited to read instead that “the area lies between Egypt, southern Lebanon, and Jordan. Today the State of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are located within this area.”

UK Lawyers for Israel said it wrote to Encyclopaedia Britannica warning against images and descriptions that mirror “some of the most extreme contemporary political narratives that deny Israel’s existence and legitimacy.”

Such framing “in children’s educational materials is particularly troubling, as it presents a modern political position as historical fact,” the organization added.

“Terminology matters, especially in children’s education. Presenting contested modern political narratives as historical fact undermines accurate learning and disproportionately affects Jewish and Israeli readers, whose history and identity are misrepresented or erased,” said Caroline Turner, the director of UKLFI, in the organization’s statement. “Using inaccurate and anachronistic terminology about Israel and Palestine risks shaping young minds with distorted and politicized narratives.”

In a statement to the UK’s Telegraph published on Saturday, Theodore Pappas, the executive editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, said that “as with all feedback we receive, we will review these claims by the UK Lawyers for Israel and make adjustments to our content, if needed.”