National Post
· collected 2026-09-10 · by Special to National Post
analysis
Historian Jeffrey Herf criticizes a Canadian Museum for Human Rights exhibit on the Palestinian Nakba, arguing that it presents a biased and inaccurate account of historical events. The exhibit, which claims that around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during Israel's creation, is based on propaganda from the 1970s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Herf argues that this narrative has been debunked by other historians, including Efraim Karsh and Yoav Gelber. According to the exhibit, Canada supported a UN resolution in November 1947 calling for two states, but it fails to mention that Palestinian Arabs rejected this plan.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-10,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
The “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present” exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights” (CMHR) brings the propaganda of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of the 1970s into an institution that receives substantial funding from federal, provincial and municipal governments.
asserted
that → uproot → governments
The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics invited me to Winnipeg to view the exhibit, drawing on my expertise as a historian who, in works including “Israel’s Moment” and “Three Faces of Antisemitism,” has studied the establishment of the State of Israel, the impact of Nazism and communism on antagonism towards Zionism and Israel both before and after 1948, along with hostility toward the Jewish state in both secular leftist and Islamist circles.
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who → invite → circles
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“Palestine Uprooted” repeats a version of events articulated by the PLO member and writer Mahmoud Darwish in a speech he wrote that was delivered by PLO chair Yasser Arafat to the United Nations General Assembly in 1974.
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that → uproot → 1974
According to Darwish and Arafat, Palestinian innocence and Israeli perfidy justified decades of PLO terrorism and rejection of compromise.
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innocence → accord → compromise
The current exhibit repeats the same version of events they offered 52 years ago.
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they → repeat → events
The only new element is that what originated as part of a propaganda campaign to delegitimate the State of Israel and justify the use terror to destroy it is now receiving credibility and legitimacy from a government-affiliated museum in Canada.
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originated → originate → Canada
The exhibit claims that, “Around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the creation of the State of Israel.”
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Palestinians → claim → Israel
Historians such as Efraim Karsh in his book “Palestine Betrayed” and Yoav Gelber in “Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Problem” have demonstrated that many thousands left their homes, some at the urging of Arab leaders, in expectation that the Arab states would soon invade and destroy the new Jewish state.
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states → betray → state
As the historian Benny Morris documented in “1948: The First Arab-Israeli War,” thousands of others became refugees as a result of battles in particular towns and villages — battles that Israel had to fight and win to ensure its survival.
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Israel → document → survival
The exhibit fails to inform viewers that in November 1947, Canada joined a two-thirds majority at the UN supporting a resolution that called for the establishment of two states — one Jewish, and one Arab — in parts of the former British Mandate for Palestine.
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that → fail → Palestine
The Palestinian Arabs, represented at the UN by the Arab Higher Committee, rejected the partition plan, insisting that there should be no Jewish state in the territory whatsoever.
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Arabs → represent → territory
The Jewish community in Mandate Palestine, represented at the UN by the Jewish Agency, accepted what became known as “the two-state solution.”
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what → represent → solution
The votes in favour of the resolution came from the Soviet Union, the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the democracies of Western Europe, the United States and Canada, among others.
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votes → come → others
On Dec. 2, 1947, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, leader of the Arab Higher Committee, responded to the UN resolution by calling for a general strike to reject it, and in the following months, the committee launched a civil war against the Jewish community to prevent its implementation.
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committee → respond → implementation
The exhibit says nothing about Husseini’s then-famous Islamist Jew-hatred, a hatred that stimulated his enthusiastic wartime collaboration with Nazi Germany, and led to his opposition to the Zionist project.
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that → say → project
The exhibit also fails to mention that on May 15, 1948, in a joint act of aggression, five Arab states — Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria — then escalated that war by ordering their armies to destroy the newly formed Jewish state.
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states → fail → state
In keeping with its propagandistic essence, the exhibit erases any agency or responsibility on the part of Palestinian Arab leaders or Arab states for beginning and escalating a war to prevent the creation of — and, upon failing that, destroy — the State of Israel.
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exhibit → keep → Israel
At its core, it was a rejection of the values of diversity and tolerance that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights claims to support.
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Museum → claim → Rights
Had the Arab Higher Committee accepted the compromise offered by the UN in 1947, there would have been no war of 1948, and no Arabs or Jews would have been uprooted.
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Arabs → accept → 1948
The ability of Palestinian propagandists to capture and misuse the credibility of a government-affiliated institution in Winnipeg will not only fan the flames of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Canada.
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ability → capture → Canada
By ignoring well-known works of historical scholarship, it also constitutes an attack on the discipline of history and the effort of historians to present a truthful and complete account of the past.
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it → ignore → past
Historians in Canada should defend our profession against the CMHR’s dismissal of our valid, but for some inconvenient, findings.
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Historians → defend → findings
Government officials should ensure that the credibility that comes from government funding is not extended to the kinds of distortions of the past that are evident in this exhibit.
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that → ensure → exhibit
Jeffrey Herf is professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and author of “Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949.”
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Herf → establish → State
