In an August 1 opinion column in The Winnipeg Free Press defending the new controversial Palestinian exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the institution’s CEO, Isha Khan, in our view failed to meaningfully address many of the serious objections that have been leveled by observers.

Her column, “Palestinian Canadian stories belong,” relied largely on flowery language to defend the exhibit, writing that it is “a reminder that behind every headline there are real people we must approach with empathy,” before adding that “much of the coverage and commentary has failed to do that, often omitting Palestinian voices entirely.”

It is unclear what is the source of Khan’s claim of widespread erasure of Palestinian voices, but there is no evidence for it whatsoever. In fact, much of the Canadian news media has incessantly platformed pro-Palestinian claims, uncritically repeating anti-Israel activists, and often simply taking complaints by activist groups and laundering it into ‘news’ stories.

Most notably, CBC, Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster, has been particularly consistent in its anti-Israel bias.

While Khan acknowledged concerns that the exhibit erased Jewish voices from its retelling of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, writing that “nothing about the way these stories are shared justifies the human rights violations that Jewish people continue to experience,” she failed to address the more fundamental concerns about the nature of the exhibit.

Her words overlook the actual problems noted by critics, who have accused the museum of spreading historical revisionism and claiming that Israel – rather than the Arab states who sought its destruction – was the culprit in the war.

Prior to 1948, Jewish representatives repeatedly agreed to carve up their historic homeland into both a Jewish and Arab state, but those proposals were roundly rejected by Arabs within pre-state Israel, as well as in Arab states, who sought to strangle the country even before it achieved independence.

And yet, as visitors to the museum’s exhibit have pointed out, the language frames Israel as the aggressor, rather than a country seeking to defend its existence against parties seeking its total destruction.

However, those foundational criticisms were never addressed in Khan’s opinion column, who instead waxed poetic about the need for understanding and tolerance.

Khan wrote that the exhibit is guided by the museum’s mandate to “to be for human rights, to promote reflection and dialogue, to broaden our shared understanding of human rights and inspire people to take action to protect them.”

While these may be worthy endeavours in theory, they must be driven by a commitment to truth, facts and historical accuracy. In that absence and in our estimation, telling stories does not further reconciliation or peace, but only serves to promote disinformation and historical revisionism instead.

Khan also ignored the problematic makeup of the exhibit’s Palestinian Content Advisory Network, which helped advise the exhibit. Its make up included Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, who has been seen at a local anti-Israel demonstration appearing to encourage children to spread anti-Jewish slurs, as well as Najat El-Khairy, a local artist whose work was promoted by the hardline anti-Israel group Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which organized celebrations after the October 7, 2023 massacres. Another member, Abigail Bakan, signed a 2023 open letter which claimed that Hamas’ murders could be “contextualized.”

These are real and very serious concerns about the exhibit and who helped steer it. But rather than acknowledge them, Khan in our view simply skipped over them completely and offered readers lofty rhetoric instead.