The backlash against the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Nakba exhibit is preposterous

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The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a national institution that can be found on Winnipeg’s Israel Asper Way, named for the man who had the original vision for the place – and the bucks to get it built. As prestigious an institution as the CMHR is, it is not accustomed to getting quite this much attention when it announces upcoming exhibitions. But the news that Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present would open there next year has caused a stir. An eruption, even.

Some groups have praised it. But the backlash against it has been intense – perhaps even more so than expected (and, oh, it was expected) – with petitions, letter-writing campaigns, appeals to the museum’s board, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Prime Minister.

Nakba exhibit at Canadian Museum for Human Rights to draw on Palestinian oral histories

The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada announced it would take its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, planned for the museum, elsewhere. The group said it was “tremendously concerned” that the exhibit “will lack balanced scholarly research and will ignore key issues of the historical and current geopolitical reality.” It also expressed concern about a lack of meaningful consultation with the “organized Jewish community.”

Asper Foundation trustee (and Izzy’s son) David Asper told the National Post that the museum “has allowed itself to become the tool, or dupe, of only one side of the story.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is urging people to tell the museum: “Don’t erase Jewish voices.”

This backlash is against an exhibition which does not yet exist. It is not only premature, but preposterous.

There is every reason for a museum whose mandate is human rights to install an exhibition about the mass displacement of at least 750,000 people in 1948, during what Palestinians call the Nakba – the catastrophe.

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This shattering history has affected many Palestinian-Canadians, whose stories will be featured. “Most of those who were displaced believed they would return in a few days or weeks,” the museum’s description of the exhibition states. “Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.”

There has been widespread focus on this mass displacement since the Israel-Hamas war, but the concept for this exhibition predates Oct. 7, 2023. It has been in the planning stages for four years, the museum says.

Concerns have been raised that the exhibit, which will be story-focused and not a comprehensive historical deep-dive, will leave out crucial context: that, for instance, the United Nations created a partition plan for British Mandatory Palestine in the wake of the Holocaust, which was rejected by Arab countries. When Israel declared itself a state, five nations attacked it. That hundreds of thousands of Jews were ultimately expelled from Arab nations and migrated to Israel, the safe haven that did not exist during the Holocaust.

There is every reason to trust that the team of professionals at a museum of the CMHR’s calibre – which relies on federal funds and oversight – will not install a shoddy, biased exhibit that will paint Jews as the devil.

Because that’s another concern: that the exhibition could contribute to the antisemitism that is now rampant.

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Antisemitism is on the rise, and it’s scary. Listen to What Is Happening Here, a new podcast series by Jesse Brown, to get a sense of how bad things are, beginning with Jewish kids at Canadian public schools.

But it is ludicrous to suggest that historical events not be explored – that perhaps they should even be suppressed – by a national museum devoted to human rights, in order to counter this disturbing rise. One should not have anything to do with the other. If someone walks away from a Nakba exhibit wanting to bully (or worse) some Jews, the problem is not with the museum – which, not incidentally, includes a comprehensive permanent gallery about the Holocaust.

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“Sharing the stories or experiences of one group doesn’t somehow take away the experiences of another,” as the museum’s director and CEO Isha Khan told me. In an interview, Ms. Khan said the concerns are being heard and she stressed that the exhibition is still in development. “We take our responsibility very seriously. And this exhibition is being given the same care and thoughtful concern that any exhibit would,” she said.

“I know that these are polarized times,” she continued. “Our job is to cut through that … and to inspire reflection, bring people together in dialogue. We hope this will do that.”

With the current state of discourse, the history of the Middle East has been dumbed down to the point of absurdity to fit social media posts and a prevailing narrative. There is more reason than ever for a museum to offer enlightenment.