A lecture on the archaeology of ancient Israel and Judah was supposed to take place at the British Museum this month. Instead, it was postponed after organizers learned that protesters intended to disrupt the event.

The subject was not the Gaza war nor settlements nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was archaeology.

It has happened before. In 2014, UNESCO canceled an exhibition on the Jewish people’s 3,500-year history in the Land of Israel after objections from Arab states. More recently, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly denied that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem, at one point claiming they were actually located in Yemen.

These episodes share a common thread. The dispute is no longer simply about the modern State of Israel nor its policies or actions. It is increasingly about the history of the Jewish people themselves.

Yet the evidence is overwhelming. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah are among the best-documented societies of the ancient Near East. Their existence is attested through inscriptions, seals, coins, manuscripts, monuments, and the records of neighboring civilizations. The British Museum itself houses artifacts that tell this story.

That is why archaeology poses such a problem for those who seek to portray Jews as foreign interlopers – colonizers – with no ancient connection to the land. Artifacts cannot be pressured into changing their testimony. Every discovery points in the same direction: the Jewish story in the Land of Israel stretches back thousands of years, before the births of Jesus and Mohammed.

Few people would tolerate a museum debating whether ancient Egypt existed or whether Rome stood in Italy. Yet Jewish history is increasingly treated as uniquely negotiable.

Curiously and alarmingly, the protest at the British Museum had a much more immediate backdrop than the current war. This talk was to take place during Jewish Culture Month and the protestors were assembled by an anti-Israel group called “Jewish Artists for Palestine.” The museum’s efforts to highlight Jewish history in the land of Israel during a period of focus on Jewish culture brought out Jewish anti-Israel protestors.

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Institutions are backing away from Jewish history and culture with the backing of fringe extremist Jews and anti-Israel Arabs. So basic history becomes debate, and the debate has moved from the policies of the Israeli government to Jews themselves.

The Nazis physically annihilated the Jews of Europe as it sought to place their culture as historical artifacts in museums. Now, museums and institutions seek to erase Jewish history and culture as a prelude to eradicating Jews in the Middle East.