In his "Antisemitism again" April 4 op-ed piece, Robert Steinbuch describes Middle Eastern University of Arkansas professor Mohja Kahf as displaying "vile invectives about Jews and Israel" in two pro-Palestinian posters on her door.

Steinbuch begins his attack by noting one of her poster's mantras, "Palestine, from the river to the sea," means "death to Israel" and is comparable to a "call for the genocide of millions of Jews in Israel." What Steinbuch leaves out is the various interpretations of this quote, depending on different points of view: A Zionist might view it as a call to destroy Israel, as Steinbuch does, but it is also, from a Palestinian perspective, a protest against occupation and a call for freedom, human rights and a right to a homeland. As a Jew who used to teach at our university and knows Mohja personally, I believe her views align with the latter.

Steinbuch says the British and the United Nations offered to split Israel between Jews and Arabs, and Jews accepted this offer while "Arabs rejected it and attacked the Jews," thus making Arabs the aggressors and Jews the victims.

Steinbuch's revisionary history never mentions the crucial 1917 Balfour Declaration, a declaration drafted by British officials to offer Jews a new homeland in Palestine. At the time Palestine was 90 percent Arab, consisting of Muslims and Christians. This declaration was drafted by British officials with no input from the Arab majority. In this declaration, Arabs are simply reduced to "non-Jews," and there is no mention of their political rights.

More egregiously, prior to this 1917 Declaration, the British had already promised Palestine an independent state. In what is known as the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence (1915-1916), a series of letters between a British Commissioner in Egypt and Hussein, emir of Mecca, a promise was made to support an independent Arab state in the Ottoman Empire in exchange for an Arab revolt. At the same time, a secret deal called the Sykes Picot Agreement (1916), was made between Britain and France to divide the region. This deal clashed with the promise made to the Arabs, who were, in colloquial terms, screwed.

Folks will have different opinions on Israel-Palestinian conflicts today. But we shouldn't shape our histories to fit our current beliefs. Now, more than ever, we need to be sticklers to truth, in all its messy and at times painful complexity.

Gwynne Gertz lives in Fayetteville.

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