Recently, it was brought to my attention that the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is moving forward in June with an exhibit called “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba, Past and Present.”
On their website, the museum describes the exhibit:
Palestinians use the word al‐Nakba — Arabic for “the catastrophe” — to describe their forced displacement in 1948. At least 750,000 people were expelled by militias and the Israeli military or fled as the conflicts grew. Most of those who were displaced believed they would return in a few days or weeks. Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.
The exhibition Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present explores the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. Featuring personal stories told through objects and video testimonies, the exhibition presents Palestinian Canadians reflecting on their ongoing struggle for justice and human rights. Together with art, photos, and text, these elements reveal enduring patterns of loss and resistance.
For Palestinians, the Nakba is both their history and their present — it is an ongoing process shaping every aspect of life today.
“Palestine” has supposedly been “uprooted.” Here is a question: How can you uproot something that never existed?
The whole exhibit is based on portraying “Palestine” as the homeland of the Palestinians, stolen from them by the Jews, who displaced and brought them ongoing persecution and suffering. This is the “Nakba,” the “catastrophe” they speak of. But this portrayal of a long-lost land called Palestine that had its own unique people, culture, government, and capital is pure fantasy, and therefore it is built purely on a revision of history.
Let’s take a look at the facts.
The word “Palestine” first appears in writings by Herodotus in the fifth century BC, where he applied it broadly to the region along the eastern Mediterranean, borrowing the name from the earlier Philistines. The word was never used to replace or erase the land of Israel—that wouldn’t happen until 135 AD with the second Jewish uprising, which deeply angered the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Seeking to erase Israel from the map, he renamed the land Provincia Syria Palaestina and sought to finish the expulsion of the Jewish people.
That is history. And so is the fact that everyone living there from that time onward was known as Palestinians, including the Jewish people.
There was a Jewish newspaper called “The Palestine Post,” which later would become “The Jerusalem Post.” There was an orchestra made up of Jewish musicians called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra,” which is now the Philharmonic Orchestra. And don’t forget about the “Palestinian Brigade,” a World War II fighting brigade alongside the British made up of Jewish volunteers.
If this was indeed the long-lost land of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, as many allege, shouldn’t the Quran—the Palestinians’ holy book—mention Palestine or Jerusalem? It doesn’t. Ironically, it does mention “Israel” around 43 times!
In contrast, the Bible mentions “Jerusalem” over 800 times and Israel approximately 2500 times. That is also why traveling to Israel makes the Bible come to life in full color. The land is full of locations where the patriarchs walked, the prophets spoke, and Jesus taught. In fact, everywhere it seems that Israel sticks a shovel in the ground, the archaeological evidence overwhelmingly connects the Jewish people to the land.
If the history of today’s “Palestine” were accurately written in a book, it would be filled with blank pages.
Moreover, when one looks at a world map of the Ottoman Empire during its 600-year rule from 1299 to 1922, there was no Palestinian province. There was no Palestinian state. There wasn’t even a unified administrative entity called “Palestine.”
It wouldn’t be until the defeat of the Ottomans and the establishment of the new British mandate that the borders of “Palestine” would be on a map, and it was a region promised as a Jewish homeland in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which became international law at the San Remo Conference in 1920.
Unfortunately, the British betrayed the Jewish people by carving out 80% of British Palestine for the Hashemite Kingdom, which would give “Trans Jordan” its independence in 1946. For those who call for a “Palestinian State”… there it is in Jordan!
Also gaining their independence under the British mandate was Iraq in 1932. Under French control, Syria gained independence in 1943 and Lebanon in 1944.
Martin Gilbert, a renowned British historian, in his book, “The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict — the ninth edition,” writes: “Largely as a result of Britain’s victories over the Turks in 1917 and 1918, more than 10 million Arabs were liberated from Turkish rule. The total area of Arab lands in Arabia was 1,184,000 square miles. Palestine, the only portion of former Turkish territory set aside for a Jewish national home, covered less than 11,000 square miles.”
Martin goes on to quote former British Prime Minister AJ Balfour: “So far, as the Arabs are concerned… I hope they will remember that it is we who have established an independent Arab sovereignty over the Hadjiz. I hope they will remember it is we who desire in Mesopotamia to prepare the way for the future of a self-governing, autonomous Arab state. And I hope that, remembering all that, they will not grudge that small notch. For it is no more than that geographically, whatever it may be historically, that small notch in what are now Arab territories being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it.”
Also worth noting is the fact that the Arabs never wanted to be called “Palestinians.” Dave Hunt, in his book “Judgment Day,” says: “As late as the 1950s, Arabs refused to be called Palestinians and declared that if there were such a people, they were Jews. To the British Peel Commission in 1937, a local Arab leader testified, ‘There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented.'”
Hunt continues: “Professor Philip Hitti, an Arab historian, testified to an Anglo-American committee of inquiry in 1946, ‘There is no such thing as Palestine in history—absolutely not!’ To the UN Security Council on May 31st, 1956, Ahmed Shukairy declared, ‘It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.'”
So what changed? Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was created in 1964, and when Yasser Arafat became its chairman a few years later, the revision of history, which the world today shamefully believes, began.
When it comes to the 750,000 Arab refugees who fled Palestine in 1948, the Canadian Museum for the Human Rights again states: “[They] were expelled by militias and the Israeli military or fled as the conflicts grew. Most of those who were displaced believed they would return in a few days or weeks. Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.”
Let’s talk about that for a moment.
Dave Hunt, in his book, responds to this narrative, writing: “The accusation has been widely publicized and believed that the Israelis drove nearly a million Arabs out of Palestine during the 1948 war. This is the foundation for the demands that the Palestinians make for their right of return to their former villages. There were some instances where Arab civilians were sheltering, helping, or hiding attacking Arab soldiers, and they were forced to leave. But most of the Arabs who fled did so in spite of Israeli promises of safety and pleas to stay—and without ever seeing an Israeli soldier, many left before Israel declared its independence and the war had really begun. It was the Arab military that warned Arab civilians to get out and declared that those who remained would be considered traitors to the Arab cause. Nevertheless, they are the only refugees in the Middle East as far as the world is concerned, and to whom all sympathy is given. No thought is given to the Jewish refugees who, in far larger numbers, were either expelled or managed to flee Muslim countries in 1948.”
There were approximately 800,000 to 850,000 Jewish refugees who had to flee Arab countries, and Israel absorbed the majority of them into their population, with no ongoing discussions today of their rights to return.
In contrast, the Arab world never absorbed the 750,000 refugees that fled. Instead, they let them dwell in squalid refugee camps, even to this day, to smear Israel and to make them look like the villain.
That is what this exhibit at the museum is all really about—villainizing Israel with no one to counter or challenge its claims. And if this remains up for years, which most exhibits tend to, you can be assured that anti-semitism will continue to spread like a wildfire in Canada.
The Arab world and the Palestinians have been given many chances to accept a two-state solution, and they have refused every single time. Instead, they repeat their mantra, “From The River To The Sea”—a message that openly speaks of the eradication of Israel. Yet, the world still demands that Israel make peace with people who wish it dead, sympathize with those who distort history, and refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
What does the God of the universe have to say about all of this? That is the most important factor.
The rebirth of the nation of Israel is not a “Nakba” (catastrophe); it is a modern-day miracle. God promised that He would regather His chosen people—not for their sakes, but for His name’s sake.
The promises God made to Abraham 4,000 years ago—promises of land, seed, and blessing—have not been forgotten by Him. In Ezekiel 36:22-24, we read, “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: ‘I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for My holy name’s sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,’ says the Lord God, ‘when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land.”
God did bring them back into their own land in 1948, as David Ben-Gurion declared the rebirth of the nation of Israel after being scattered for 2,000 years. It truly was a miracle. Just as God says in Isaiah 66:8-10, “‘Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to give birth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion was in labor, She gave birth to her children. Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?’ says the Lord. ‘Shall I who cause delivery shut up the womb?’ says your God. ‘Rejoice with Jerusalem, And be glad with her, all you who love her; Rejoice for joy with her, all you who mourn for her.'”
No other nation on earth has been scattered from their ancestral homeland for 2,000 years, only to return, rebuild the waste cities, make the desert blossom as a rose, and have their language restored. None of that has happened to any other people group other than the Jewish people.
I hope that you are rejoicing in what God has done. I hope that you love Israel and the Jewish people—because God does. As long as the sun, moon, and stars are shining in the sky, He says in Jeremiah 31:35-36 that Israel will never cease from being a nation before Him forever. Stop with the disinformation, and put that in your exhibit display, Canadian Museum for Human Rights!
