University changes wording after 'ancient Palestine' row

The Open University (OU) has said it will no longer refer to “ancient Palestine” as the birthplace of the Virgin Mary in course material following complaints that the term risks “erasing Jewish history.”UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote to the university to address the use of the description in one of the OU’s humanities modules, which also includes a map of “ancient Palestine” and references the Aramaic language as widely spoken in that region.