The taxpayer-funded Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg continues to come under fire for its scheduled exhibit on the so-called “nakba,” the Arabic word for catastrophe which refers to Israel’s independence in 1948, and which will focus on the experiences of Arabs during that period.

After scandalous news showing that museum officials met with the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s representative to Canada, Mona Abuamara, suggesting potential foreign interference in a taxpayer-funded institution, one Winnipeg columnist attempted to come to the defence of the museum’s exhibit, but in doing so, fundamentally misrepresented why the project is so controversial.

In his June 17 opinion column in The Winnipeg Free Press, “Winnipeg museum’s core mandate is to confront inconvenient truths,” Dan Lett – who has previously spread the baseless allegation that Israel is “motivated by genocidal agendas” – argues that by purporting to tell the story of Palestinian-Arabs in 1948, the museum is cleaving to its “core mandate…to confront inconvenient truths.”

It is precisely the nature of those supposed “truths” that is at issue.

As Lett describes it, the “nakba” refers to “the forced displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians in the prelude to the Arab-Israeli war,” and the war “erupted in the immediate aftermath of the partitioning of Palestine to create an independent Jewish state.”

It is highly misleading to refer to 750,000 Palestinian-Arabs being forcibly displaced, given that they left for a myriad of reasons, notably including active encouragement from Arab leaders, who expected a swift victory over Israel.

More importantly, Lett’s description that the 1948 war “erupted” is remarkably light on details. The war did not simply “erupt.” Following Israel’s declaration of independence, the country was attacked by its Arab neighbours, who made no secret of their desire to wipe the Jewish State off the face of the Earth. It was in their failure to do so that the “nakba” took place.

In effect, then, the “nakba” – much like Nazi Germany’s loss in World War Two, which also produced German refugees – should not be seen as a catastrophe to be mourned, but the defeat of a force who sought to carry out genocide against the Jews, and thus a victory to be celebrated.

Prior to the war, the Palestinian-Arabs were offered a state of their own alongside Israel, which they unceremoniously rejected, as they have done multiple times since. Yet this history of Palestinian rejectionism and embrace of violence, war and terrorism were notably absent from Lett’s retelling.

It is historical revisionism which is of concern at the CMHR. Will the museum tell the real story of 1948, including the attempted extermination of the nascent Jewish State at the hands of its Arab neighbours? Will it tell the story of Palestinian Arabs who refused a state of their own, and instead sought to destroy Israel? Will it admit that many – if not – most of the Arabs who left did so at the behest of Arab leaders?

Given that the museum has relied on a cadre of anti-Israel activists to help develop the exhibit, there are very real reasons why there is such concern that a supposedly educational institution could be spreading historical revisionist propaganda, paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. However, rather than addressing this uncomfortable truth, Lett has instead chosen to dismiss legitimate concerns and falsely frame them as knee-jerk rejectionism.