A letter shows a “public apology” from the University of Edinburgh to the Palestinian people for the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
This is not true. The letter comes from a fictional performance piece set in 2043. The University of Edinburgh has issued no such letter.
A letter supposedly offering a “public apology” from the University of Edinburgh to the Palestinian people is circulating online. But this actually comes from a fictional performance piece and is not a genuine letter issued by the institution.
The letter being shared has the University’s name, emblem and address at the top. Several paragraphs of text outline an apology aimed at “confronting its colonial legacy and starting a decolonial process of reparations for Palestinian people through five concrete actions”, which it goes on to list.
It specifically apologises for the 1917 Balfour Declaration, a letter written by then former Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour, who was also the University of Edinburgh’s chancellor between 1891 and 1930. The letter was a statement of the British government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
One post sharing the letter has more than 1,400 shares on X (formerly Twitter) and says: “This is how institutions ought to act. There is no excuse in 2023 to cling to the supremely damaging legacy of colonialism.” Another post says: “Apology from the University if Edinburgh to the Palestinian people with regards the Balfour declaration [sic]”.
However, the letter does not show an official apology from the University of Edinburgh.
A University spokesperson told Full Fact: “This is not an official statement from the University of Edinburgh. It is a fictional text that was created for a private theatre event.”
The letter comes from a performance lecture titled “Balfour Reparations (2023-2043)” delivered by postdoctoral fellow Dr Farah Saleh at the university. While the performance took place on 14 December 2023, it was set in 2043 and reflects on the “fictive apology letter that the University of Edinburgh will have issued in 2023 to the Palestinian people promising them reparations”.
Dr Saleh posted on X: “To clarify, the apology letter below is fiction. It is part of my performance lecture “Balfour Reparations (2023-2043),” which was developed during my post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Edinburgh.”
She added: “The letter builds on and transforms a statement written by Edinburgh University staff” titled ‘A Collective Statement Calling on the University of Edinburgh to Protect Speech on Palestine, Address the Intimidation on Campus, and Cut University Links to Violence’, which was published by the Edinburgh Race Equality Network on 14 November and signed by multiple groups within the university.
Full Fact has seen lots of examples of false claims about the conflict in Israel and Gaza as part of our work tackling online misinformation. This includes miscaptioned videos and fake or altered media coverage. You can find more of our work on the subject here.
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Image courtesy of Stinglehammer |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the letter comes from a fictional performance piece set in 2043 and the University of Edinburgh has issued no such public apology.
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