A Case Vs A “Nakba” Exhibit At The Canadian Museum For Human Rights

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Verifiable facts about the history of the 1948 War of Independence, what Palestinians refer to as the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” cannot be ignored, misrepresented, or revised to fit the Palestinian narrative of perennial victimhood, grievance, and resentment. Yet this is the very thing that those opposing the Canadian Museum of Human Rights’ proposed “Nakba” exhibit, slated to open in June of this year, fear has happened. The lack of consultation with credible historians, scholars, or members of the Jewish community and the inclusion of known antisemitic members of Winnipeg’s Palestinian community affirm this fear is legitimate.

The Palestinian view of the 1948 War of Independence as the “Nakba” (“Catastrophe”) perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinian people is an inversion of reality, predicated on historical inaccuracies and omissions. The genocide they accuse Israel of is what they themselves were, and remain, guilty of.

The “Nakba” was entirely the making of the local Arab leadership and of the military leadership of the five Arab armies that attacked Israel immediately after it declared itself a state in 1948, their stated goals being to destroy the fledgling state and to drive the Jews into the sea. According to Benny Morris, foremost historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab exodus began earlier. Starting in December 1947, “Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments.” Morris also points out: “There can be no exaggerating the importance of these early Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations.”

Thus, though some Palestinians were expelled, for example from Lydda and Ramle, they constituted only a handful. Most were urged by their leaders to leave to make way for the invading Arab armies or by Arab military leaders to “prevent their hamper[ing] the operations of the fighters” and to prevent their being “an obstacle to the holy war” (Arab National Committee, March 8, 1948). Others left out of fear of being caught in the crossfire of war.

The Jews, however, urged them to stay. A British report dated April 23, 1948, stated, “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay.” According to Morris, “there was no government policy” for expulsion, and “in general, Haganah and IDF commanders were not forced to confront the moral dilemma of expulsion” as “most Arabs fled before or during the battle, before Israeli troops reached their homes.”

Morris concludes: “The [refugee] problem,” and hence the “Nakba,” “was a direct consequence of the war that the Palestinians, and surrounding Arab states, had launched.” The Israeli War of Independence (1948) was unquestionably a war of self-defense on Israel’s part. Had the Palestinians accepted the UN Partition Plan of 1947, as the Jews did, they would have a state today, and there would be no refugee problem.

The inflated claim of a million Palestinian refugees is another falsehood about the myth of the “Nakba” that has been dispelled by historical documents but which will surely be exploited in the exhibit. According to the UN Mediator on Palestine, 472,000 Palestinians fled, most to areas within “Palestine” or neighbouring countries.

This erroneous “Nakba” narrative also neglects the 850,000 Jewish refugees, almost twice the number of Palestinian refugees, driven out of Arab lands, who had to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to a different country with a different language and customs, all of whom were integrated into Israeli society.

As the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada has recently pointed out, the factual history of the period must also include Jewish communities across Israel, the Middle East and North Africa that were violently displaced and forced out, ending millennia-old diasporas.

The Jewish Heritage Centre also calls attention to the fact that this period saw 70,000 internally displaced Jews, with the following Jewish areas depopulated: the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem; Gush Etzion bloc (Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim, Revadim); Atarot and Neve Yaakov (north of Jerusalem); Kalia and Beit HaArava (Dead Sea area); and Kfar Darom (southern Gaza) (Morris).

Also ignored is the fact that during the siege and expulsion from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, “[t]he Arab Legion besieged Jewish Jerusalem, aiming to cut off the city’s 100,000 Jewish residents, who were under intense artillery fire. Synagogues, homes, and Jewish institutions were destroyed or desecrated. Every Jewish resident was expelled, and captured fighters were taken as POWs to Jordan.”

Further, this period led to state-backed persecution and public hostility against Jews in Middle Eastern and North African countries. Jews faced harsh new laws, loss of citizenship, property seizures, pogroms, arrests, and intimidation. Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Jews fled or were forced out of Middle Eastern and North African lands. Ancient communities in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Egypt were effectively extinguished (The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada).

There was no genocidal “catastrophe” committed by Israel in 1948. Israel was responding in self-defense to the unprovoked attack by five Arab countries, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, with the support of local Arabs, on their nascent state. Their stated intention was to erase the day-old State of Israel from the face of the map. Thus, their actions precisely fit the definition of genocide, according to the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide: the deliberate killing of large numbers of people based on nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion, with the specific intent of destroying the group.

The driving mission of Palestinianism has been and remains the total eradication of the State of Israel and the death of all Jews. This ultimate genocidal goal has been, and is still, clearly and openly reiterated by many Palestinian and Arab leaders to this day.

Similarly, there is no genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza today, though there is an ongoing genocide being perpetrated by Hamas and other extremist jihadist groups, with the support of the majority of Palestinian civilians, in the current war in Gaza, even during the recent ceasefire that is violated daily by Hamas.

The massacre of October 7, 2023, the original crime that started the war in Gaza, a war Israel never wanted and still does not want, is in every way a genocide, with its acts of murder, torture, mutilation, beheading, rape, and burning alive of Israeli civilians, with 1,182 murdered, 4,000 wounded, and 251 kidnapped, by 3,800 Hamas terrorists together with 2,200 members of other terrorist groups and Palestinian civilians (Lord Roberts of Belgravia, 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, 2025).

Article II of the Genocide Convention identifies specific acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” They include:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The article argues these are accurate descriptions of the atrocities committed on October 7.

Israel’s stated war aims are the return of its hostages and the elimination of Hamas’ military and governance capabilities to remove the terrorist threat from Gaza and secure Israel’s existence. Israel’s intent is to defend itself, not to eliminate the Palestinian people. Therefore, its actions do not conform to the definition of genocide.

In a recent lecture, “Accusations of Genocide: Assessing Israel’s Right to Self-Defense,” Dr. Norman Goda, a scholar on the Holocaust, war crimes, and 20th-century diplomacy, rejects accusations of genocide against Israel, describing them as a “globally wielded weapon of war aimed at the destruction of the State of Israel.” Antisemitic tropes, he argues, laced the genocide charges from the outset of this rhetorical warfare.

The 2025 report by self-described “genocide scholars” has also been criticized, while UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese’s “Anatomy of Genocide” is described by the author as lacking credibility.

The historical truth about the 1948 War of Independence, as well as the current reality in Gaza, is presented as an affirmation of President John F. Kennedy’s observation: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and repeated.”

And the Canadian Museum for Human Rights may serve to enhance this dangerous myth through its “Nakba” exhibit, making a mockery of founder Israel Asper’s original vision.