National Jewish organization takes human rights museum to task over Palestinian exhibit

A national Jewish organization has launched a campaign targeting the Canadian Museum for Human Rights over an upcoming exhibit about the 1948 forced displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians in what is now Israel.

The campaign, which was initiated by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, expresses concern that the exhibit — titled Palestine Uprooted: The Nakba Past and Present — doesn’t tell the full story of what happened at that time to many in that region, including Jews.

“Human rights matter — and so does history,” the CIJA said on the campaign page. “Unfortunately, this exhibit has lacked proper consultation and omits the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forcibly displaced from centuries-old communities in Israel and across the region.”

The organization goes on to say “national, publicly funded museums have a mandate to contribute to ‘the collective memory and sense of identity of all Canadians’ — not to serve as tools for one-sided political agendas.”

Nicole Amiel, the CIJA’s director of media relations, said “thousands” of emails have already been sent to the CMHR about the exhibit.

The email campaign follows a statement about the exhibit issued on Nov. 19 by Belle Jarniewski, director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

“We are tremendously concerned that the planned exhibit will lack balanced scholarly research and will ignore key issues of the historical and current geopolitical reality that is Israel, such as the multi-millennia history of successive colonization and enslavement,” Jarniewski said in the statement.

She added that opening the exhibit now is a problem for the Jewish community in Canada because of the surge in antisemitism.

“This exhibit will likely exacerbate our situation,” she said.

“This exhibit will likely exacerbate our situation.”

Because of the lack of consultation, the heritage centre has withdrawn its plans to hold a program at the CMHR for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, she said.

The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg added its support to the heritage centre, issuing a statement of its own that praised the CMHR for how it has, in the past, built trust by inviting meaningful consultation with various communities.

For the Jewish community, however, “that trust has been shaken,” said the statement, which was issued by CEO Jeff Lieberman and chair Paula Parks.

The lack of discussion with the community “has left many of us concerned that the exhibit may present a narrow and one-sided picture of this complex history,” they said.

An exhibit that addresses displacement in the region but omits this reality “loses essential context,” the statement said, adding the federation has “repeatedly and respectfully tried to engage the museum” about it.

The statement concludes by saying that while the federation values its many years of partnership and collaboration with the CMHR, they hope “it will pause its plans until it begins a proper, open consultation process and grounds the exhibit in credible research that reflects the full historical record. Our community stands ready to participate in that work.”

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president for the CIJA in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, reached out to CMHR leadership when he learned about the exhibit. He said he offered to convene leading experts to help ensure any exhibit presents a balanced, fact-based and comprehensive narrative.

“As currently framed, the proposed direction will deliver an incomplete and unbalanced narrative, one that omits Jewish refugee experiences entirely and will carry reputational consequences for the museum,” he stated.

CMHR CEO Isha Khan released a statement about the exhibit saying it is “not a historical retrospective, but rather a multi-media exhibit that will share the personal stories of Palestinian Canadians who were displaced during the 1948 Nakba to today.”

The exhibit, which will open in June, is “undergoing the same academic and curatorial rigour as all of our exhibits,” she said, adding there are “always individuals or groups who are interested or concerned in the nature of our content.”

The CMHR is confident the exhibit, like others in the museum, is being “developed with responsibility and care to ensure that we advance the understanding of human rights.”

While the CMHR has received emails from Jewish Canadians about the exhibit, Khan said they have also received emails of support from members of the Jewish community across Canada “who believe that Palestinian experiences should be shared.”

Khan expressed disappointment about the heritage centre pulling out of the Holocaust Remembrance Day program, saying, “We hope to work with them again in the future.”

She added the CMHR shares the community’s concerns about rising antisemitism, saying it remains “steadfast in our commitment to providing Holocaust education and programming that combats antisemitism.”

Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, said the exhibit “is great and long overdue. We’ve been advocating for it for a long time.”

Although some Jewish organizations are expressing their concern about the exhibit, he has heard from others in the Jewish community “who support the exhibit and are glad it is happening,” he said.

Jewish Canadians are “more than welcome to talk to the CMHR about having an exhibition about their experience of displacement during that time period,” Zeid said. But, he added, “This is an exhibit about the Palestinian experience. It’s about Palestinians and by Palestinians. It’s told by Palestinian people for the wider Canadian public, for them to understand our experience.”

“Nakba” is Arabic for “the catastrophe.” It is the word Palestinians use to describe their forced displacement during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

At the same time, according to CIJA, about 70,000 Jews were displaced from places such as the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, Gaza and other areas, along with an estimated 800,000 to one million Jews who fled or were forced out of Middle Eastern and North African countries such as Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Egypt.

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