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Jeffrey Herf: 'Nakba' exhibit is a direct assault on historical truths

Historian Jeffrey Herf visits the human rights museum and details what was left out of the controversial exhibit

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.

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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.

Jeffrey Herf: 'Nakba' exhibit is a direct assault on historical truths Back to video

“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. According to Darwish and Arafat, Palestinian innocence and Israeli perfidy justified decades of PLO terrorism and rejection of compromise.

The........

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