Canadian Museum for Human Rights trustee resigns, cites ‘one-sided’ Palestinian exhibit

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A trustee at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is quitting the organization’s board over a coming exhibition about the late 1940s displacement of Palestinians, saying its lack of vital historical context will stir up hostility against Jewish people.

Mark Berlin submitted his resignation on Monday in a letter addressed to Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, and Benjie Nycum, the museum’s board chair. He has served as trustee since 2018.

The exhibition, opening this Saturday, focuses on people affected by the Nakba – Arabic for “catastrophe” – when around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced between 1947 and 1949 during fighting over control of what is now Israel.

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In his resignation letter, Prof. Berlin said the museum’s exhibition fails to include the expulsion of roughly 850,000 Jews from Arab states alongside its account of Palestinian displacement, even though the two events began around the same time. Jews in Arab countries were expelled or forced to flee owing to harsh persecution after the state of Israel was established in May, 1948.

“The story of the Palestinian displacement should be told,” he said in the letter. “However, telling the story with a one-sided perspective chosen by the Museum serves to deepen division and contributes to further hostility toward Jews in Canada.”

In an interview, Prof. Berlin added: “There’s the Palestinian Nakba and the Jewish Nakba, and the fact is that these are not severable.”

The exhibition, which is titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, has faced criticism since it was announced, largely based on the museum’s descriptions and promotional materials. While the exhibition’s page on the museum’s website features material about the events of the late 1940s, it also describes the Nakba as an “ongoing process” and includes a photo of displaced Palestinians in Gaza taken last year.

The Winnipeg-based human rights museum is a Crown corporation set up in 2008 under then-prime minister Stephen Harper, and it operates at arm’s length from Ottawa. It receives close to $30-million annually from the federal government to cover its operating costs.

Prof. Berlin is an international human rights lawyer who served as senior adviser on the Middle East to Canada’s former attorney-general Irwin Cotler, and is currently a professor of practice at McGill University.

In an interview, he described himself as “pro-Palestinian” and noted when he served in the Canadian government, as director-general of international legal programs, he helped set up a prosecutorial service for Palestinians, and opened and staffed an office in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank.

Mr. Miller’s office declined to comment on the reasons Prof. Berlin gave for resigning but thanked him for his contributions as trustee.

“Like all Canadians, we expect the Board of Trustees to continue its important work in fulfilling the mission of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and to remain representative of the diversity of Canadian voices as the vacancy is filled in the coming months,” Alisson Lévesque, director of communications for the minister, said in an e-mailed statement.

Some Jewish groups, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith Canada and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, have also raised concern that the exhibition could fuel antisemitism by not providing more historical context.

Prof. Berlin’s letter lays out what he calls the “undeniable historical facts.” The 1947 United Nations partition plan proposed separate Jewish and Arab states in what was called Mandatory Palestine at the time, he wrote. “The Jewish leadership accepted the plan while the surrounding Arab states and local leadership rejected it. Five Arab states immediately launched a war against the newly established state of Israel,” he continued. “As a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced as were hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands.”

He said the human rights museum’s mandate under statute is to “explore the subject of human rights, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada in order to enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection and dialogue.”

In a statement Monday, the museum’s chief executive officer Isha Khan defended the coming exhibition, saying it has been in development for four years.

She said Prof. Berlin’s resignation letter “presents the opinions and perspectives of the Jewish community as a monolith” when they are in fact not. “We understand his concerns. We have received both criticism and support from Jewish Canadians.”

Ms. Khan said the museum exercises “curatorial independence,” leaving it to experts to design its exhibitions.

She rejected the idea that the Palestine Uprooted exhibition is incomplete. “Sharing the stories of one community in no way minimizes the experiences of another. Focusing in this one exhibit on the human violations faced by of Palestinian Canadians does not negate the human rights violations faced by Jewish people.”

She said the exhibition was developed after “we identified that Palestinian Canadian voices were underrepresented in our galleries.”

Ms. Khan said the exhibition is not a commentary on Zionism or anti-Zionism, “nor is it a challenge to the legitimacy of the state of Israel.” She said information about the exhibition has been shared widely, but “misconceptions continue.”

Museum board chair Benjie Nycum, in a statement, said he was saddened by Prof. Berlin’s resignation. “In Mark’s years of service since 2018, he has contributed time, effort, wisdom, leadership and passion to the board.”

He said the board remains committed to the exhibition opening on Saturday.

Prof. Berlin said he was unsuccessful in repeated efforts to convince the museum to add more historical background to the Nakba exhibition. He said he had even suggested to museum leadership that they install placards outside the display area that offered more context.

“The controversy surrounding this exhibit, and my unsuccessful efforts to fight against what I believe to be institutional antizionism and to bring a more balanced perspective to the exhibit’s development, has undermined my confidence in the museum as a place the Canadian public can trust to present an accurate historical exhibit, replacing trust with ideology,” he wrote.

Ms. Khan, in an interview Monday, disputed Prof. Berlin’s charge of “institutional antizionism.”

“It’s not accurate,” she said.

In his letter, Prof. Berlin said the museum has “repeatedly rebuffed requests for over two years from the Jewish community to be meaningfully consulted, despite such consultations having occurred in connection with previous exhibits.” He acknowledged in an interview that there have been conversations between the museum and Jewish groups, but said these did not constitute consultations.

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He said in his opinion the museum is conducting itself differently in this case then it did when it faced criticism from Ukrainian-Canadians over how it would address the Holodomor, a Soviet state-engineered famine in Ukraine that killed millions. “They were able to accommodate after two years of consultation, and it changed the look, feel and face of what had been initially planned,” Prof. Berlin said of the museum.

The Nakba exhibit, taking up about 12 metres of an existing gallery, will tell stories through video testimonies, photographs, art, objects and writing.

In earlier remarks to The Canadian Press, Ms. Khan said she has met with leaders of Jewish organizations across the country and shares their concerns about rising antisemitism.

Ms. Khan said the museum has added more programming and exhibits about antisemitism in the past two years, and has committed to telling stories about Jewish displacement in the future.

“We’re actively working to combat antisemitism. We’ve been unequivocal that that is our responsibility as a museum for human rights.”

With reports from Canadian Press and Marsha Lederman