A Palestinian museum with extensive connections to British government-funded institutions and cultural organizations is facing accusations of glorifying some of the most notorious terrorists responsible for murdering Israeli civilians, raising questions about Britain’s willingness to condemn Palestinian terrorism while imposing sanctions on Israelis over alleged violence in Yehudah and Shomron.
The Palestinian Museum, established in 2016 in Birzeit, operates both a physical museum and an extensive digital archive containing photographs, posters, historical documents, and educational materials. Among its holdings are materials honoring individuals responsible for deadly terrorist attacks, including the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, the murder of an Israeli family in Nahariya, and attacks that killed scores of Israeli civilians.
The controversy was highlighted by Susie Dym, a London-born spokesperson for the Israeli organization Mattot Arim, who accused British authorities of applying a double standard in their treatment of Israel and Palestinian institutions. Dym pointed to Britain’s sanctions against certain Israelis while maintaining cultural and institutional relationships with a museum whose collections include material celebrating convicted terrorists and perpetrators of mass-casualty attacks.
The museum’s online collection includes a poster featuring Dalal Mughrabi, who led the March 1978 Coastal Road terrorist attack in Israel. During the assault, terrorists seized a bus and murdered 38 people, including 13 children and an American photographer, Gail Rubin, according to commonly cited accounts of the massacre. The museum’s description of Mughrabi identifies her as a “Martyr of the Palestinian Revolution“.
Additional material in the museum’s digital archive includes photographs of a kindergarten and school named in Mughrabi’s honor, along with several other images of the terrorist. The continued commemoration of Mughrabi has long been a source of controversy because of the scale of the massacre she helped carry out.
The museum’s materials have also appeared on other websites promoting Palestinian nationalism. One article published by Islamicity.org reproduced a Mughrabi poster attributed to the museum and described her actions in celebratory terms.
The article stated: “Dalal’s group hijacked a bus … 39 Israelis were killed…. [Dalal] inspired thousands of young Palestinian and Lebanese women to follow in her footsteps…. This month, and every March, Palestinians commemorate a Palestinian heroine who sacrificed herself for her country.”
Another figure represented in the museum’s collection is Samir Kuntar, the Lebanese terrorist responsible for one of Israel’s most horrific attacks. Kuntar participated in a 1979 terrorist raid in Nahariya in which members of the Haran family were murdered.
The museum’s archive contains portraits of Kuntar during his imprisonment in Beersheba. Even the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz described his actions as “one of the most traumatic terror attacks in Israeli history”.
Smadar Haran, whose husband Danny and four-year-old daughter Einat were murdered in the attack, previously recounted the brutality of the assault.
She described how the terrorists took her husband and daughter “down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat…. Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.”
Kuntar was subsequently released in a 2008 prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, a decision that generated considerable controversy because of the murders for which he had been convicted.
The museum also maintains a collection dedicated to Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Palestinian leader convicted in Israel in connection with five murders committed during the Second Intifada.
In its description of the collection, the museum declares: “Marwan al-Barghouthi is a Palestinian freedom fighter… a symbol of the Palestinian Revolution and the Palestinian National Liberation Movement.”
The archive includes photographs showing Barghouti alongside other imprisoned Palestinian militants. His portrayal as a revolutionary figure stands in sharp contrast to his criminal convictions in Israel.
Other materials commemorate Yahya Ayyash, the Hamas bombmaker commonly known as the Engineer, who played a central role in organizing suicide bombings against Israeli civilians during the 1990s.
A poster produced by a Birzeit University student organization marks the 12th anniversary of what it calls Ayyash’s “murder” by Israel. Ayyash was responsible for developing explosives used in numerous terrorist attacks that killed approximately 100 Israelis and wounded hundreds more.
Another poster commemorates Khalil al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, a senior PLO terrorist commander linked to attacks that killed large numbers of Israelis.
The poster identifies him as ‘The Heroic Shaheed, The Commander Abu Jihad, Martyr of the War for Independence’.
According to the museum, the item belongs to its “permanent collection” and is among the “documents that form an important part of the history of the Palestinian revolution”.
Abu Jihad was implicated in planning and directing attacks that killed at least 125 Israelis, including the 1978 Coastal Road massacre.
The archive also preserves a photograph of the grave of Ali Hassan Salameh, a senior Black September operative associated with the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered.
The photograph identifies the burial location as “at the Cemetery of the Shaheeds”, using the Arabic term for martyrs.
Although museums routinely preserve controversial historical material for educational and documentary purposes, critics argue that the language used in several of these collections goes beyond neutral historical presentation and portrays perpetrators of terrorist atrocities as national heroes.
Particular concern has been raised about the museum’s educational activities and its relationships with Palestinian schools.
The institution operates a Teachers’ Programme intended to connect its exhibits and digital collections with classroom instruction. According to its published description, the initiative “is based on creating a link between teachers, schools, and the museum” through “school research projects that link the curriculum and the knowledge provided by the museum through its … digital spaces.”
Its broader Education Programme “encourages children… bringing the museum’s culture to the new generation”.
The museum also works with the Palestinian Ministry of Education and has reported receiving nearly 100 visits annually from government schools.
Dym argues that these educational partnerships make the museum’s presentation of convicted terrorists and individuals responsible for mass murder particularly troubling, given the potential for children to encounter such material in an institutional setting.
The controversy also extends to the museum’s connections with British organizations.
The Palestinian Museum is a major initiative of Taawon, also known as the Welfare Association, a Palestinian nonprofit organization involved in humanitarian, cultural, and development projects.
A British organization operating under the Taawon name is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales under charity number 1020238. Its charitable status provides access to tax benefits under applicable British law, although the existence of those benefits does not by itself establish that British taxpayers directly financed any particular museum exhibit.
The British Council, Britain’s international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities, has also been identified by the museum among its supporters.
King Charles III serves as patron of the British Council, which operates under a royal charter and receives funding from the British government alongside income from its other activities.
The museum has additionally identified support from the British government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, raising questions about the nature and extent of official British financial involvement.
British cultural institutions have participated in projects with the museum as well.
The British Library, the United Kingdom’s national library, collaborated with the Palestinian Museum on a project called “Conservation for Digitisation”, involving the preservation and digitization of historical material.
In 2022, the museum also established a textile conservation studio through cooperation with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, another prominent institution that receives British government funding.
Officials involved in that initiative discussed Palestinian embroidery and the political symbolism of its colors, including “colour schemes of red, green, black and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag”, which they characterized as “an embroidered message of resistance”.
The museum’s first director general, Mahmoud Hawari, also had professional ties to Britain’s cultural establishment, having served as a lead curator at the British Museum.
Dym questioned whether officials involved in these British partnerships were familiar with the museum’s online holdings and the terminology used to describe terrorists responsible for murdering Israeli civilians.
The dispute comes against the backdrop of Britain’s increasingly restrictive policies toward certain Israeli individuals and organizations in Yehudah and Shomron.
British authorities have imposed sanctions on Israeli individuals and entities accused of involvement in violence against Palestinians, while also taking measures targeting certain settlement-related activities. Those actions have been defended by British officials as responses to alleged human rights violations and threats to regional stability.
Dym rejects the legal and political arguments underpinning those measures. She cites the writings of Professor Eugene Rostow, a former dean of Yale Law School, who argued that Jewish settlement rights in territories captured by Israel in 1967 were protected by the international legal framework, including Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.
That interpretation remains disputed, with much of the international community maintaining that Israeli settlements in the territories violate international law, a position Israel contests.
For Dym, however, the central issue is the contrast between Britain’s readiness to penalize Israelis accused of misconduct and its continued association with Palestinian cultural institutions whose archives contain material commemorating perpetrators of deadly terrorist attacks.
The museum’s defenders could argue that preserving posters, photographs, and political documents is part of the legitimate work of recording Palestinian history. The criticism, however, focuses particularly on descriptions that refer to convicted terrorists as martyrs, heroes, and freedom fighters, rather than merely documenting their historical activities.
The extent to which British financial assistance or institutional cooperation has directly supported the specific exhibits and digital materials identified by Dym remains an important distinction. The existence of a partnership does not necessarily mean that a British organization endorses every item in the museum’s collection.
Nevertheless, Dym maintains that British institutions should be held accountable for their relationships with organizations that present terrorists in celebratory terms, especially while London continues to pursue punitive measures against Israelis.
Her criticism ultimately raises a question for British authorities: whether the government will examine its institutional and financial relationships with the Palestinian Museum in light of the materials identified in its archive, or allow those partnerships to continue without further scrutiny.
Additional research confirmed a particularly significant detail: a British Council cultural preservation grant of approximately £152,000 funded a project involving the Palestinian Museum and British Library. The grant supported the preservation and digitization of roughly 3,000 historical documents. A separate $484,298 grant from the ALIPH Foundation supported the museum’s textile conservation partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum. These documented funding arrangements establish the British institutional connections, although they do not establish that British funds paid for the specific terrorist-related archive entries.
{Matzav.com}
