The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has unveiled a controversial exhibit on the Nakba, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Still from video, CBC

 

"My dad [Izzie Asper] always said the most important asset you have is  your reputation."

"I think that this exhibit [Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present] is going to have a lot of people lose faith in the museum's trustworthiness for being an honest purveyor of accurate historical and current-day information."

"[The museum piece] deliberately omits key, relevant facts about the conflict [that are crucial to understanding its full context]."

"It's inaccurate, and in my opinion shows bias on the part of the curators of the museum, and is not at the level of scholarship befitting a federal institution." 

Gail Asper founder, Canadian Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg 

Photo: CMHR, Aaron Cohen

 

"The story of the Nakba is a complex one. It's not reduced to a quick little sound bite. There's a lot of nuance with it, there's a lot of history that preceded it and a lot of history that developed over the years of the Nakba."

"Hamas terrorists launched the greatest large-scale massacre against Jewish civilians since World War II, where over 1,150 or so Jewish babies and children and mothers and young people were brutally murdered in the most horrific fashion."

"The failure to describe that horror, and then simply say, Oh, ya, these people were displaced', is an error in judgment."

Mark Berlin, former CMHR board member

 

"The frame, or the scope, of the exhibit is to centre Palestinian experiences of forced displacement. So it's told through their stories, through their lens, and that's an approach the museum takes in a variety of other places."

"Every word in the exhibit is backed up by credible research. We had our research sources academically reviewed internally, and then we took an additional step to have them reviewed externally." 

CMHR chief Executive Isha Khan

A multimedia gallery on the museum's second floor that introduces visitors to a timeline of human rights acknowledges 'hundreds of thousands of people became refugees' in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, including Palestinian Arabs and Jews from surrounding Arab countries. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)

 

The Canadian Human Rights Museum, established in Winnipeg, was the brainchild of Israel (Izzie) Asper, former Canadian media magnate. The initial $24 million required to move the idea of the museum to its actual presence was donated by the Asper Foundation. There was also a public subscription, and later financial support from the federal government. From conception in 2003 to opening in 2014, the museum set out to inform the public of human rights and the world's most egregious assaults against human rights. There were ten permanent exhibits when the museum opened, the Holocaust among them.

 

Most recently the seven-story museum has mounted a Nakba exhibit that includes a collection of photos, video testimonies family heirlooms and artworks to portray the experience of Palestinian Arabs who fled conflict in the area. Keys to Palestinian homes that had been left are among the exhibits. Beginning at the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 when Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Syria attacked the fledgling Jewish state to destroy it in response to the Partition Plan offered by the United Nations empowering Jews to return to their ancestral home, 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled.

 

Most left on the promise by the invading Arab armies that when Israel was destroyed they could return to claim the entire territory; others fled to escape the incipient war situation while others still were forced to leave as enemies of the new state. Over a million Palestinians chose to remain, where there are now 2 million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. Concurrently with the re-establishment of the Jewish state, surrounding Arab countries forcefully expelled their Jewish residents who had lived there since antiquity, confiscating their properties. 850,000 Jews found themselves homeless, more than balancing the number of Palestinian Arabs who became refugees through an event they named their Nakba (catastrophe).

 

The exhibit makes no mention of the expulsion of 850,000 Jews from the very Arab countries that went to war on Israel, amidst others. In this mass displacement, the Jews found homes for themselves in Israel or elsewhere in the greater diaspora. The Palestinians who settled in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon were there ostensibly on a temporary basis; none of the neighbouring Arab/Muslim countries offered them permanent status, much less citizenship.

Palestine Uprooted at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Photo: Annie Kierans. Courtesy the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

 

And while there is mention of the infamous October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel led by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, joined by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah alongside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with ordinary Palestinian/Gaza citizens, it fails to identify the victims of that mass atrocity as Jews, only as 'people'. That 'people', the Jews and their country, Israel, responded to that horrific event as any other country would do to protect its own, by invading the area responsible -- Gaza -- in search of the murderous terrorists.

 

That time and place in more recent history was included as illustrative of ongoing Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel's military 'occupation'. It is disingenuous for the chief executive of the museum to declare that there was academic scholarship involved in the setting up of this one-sided, dreadfully canted exhibition in its obvious obfuscation of cause-and-effect, showcasing Palestinian victimhood by a heartless, 'genocidal' neighbour.   

"I think that the board clearly didn't understand the risks of doing inaccurate exhibits on volatile subjects."

"They didn't understand the impact it could have on their reputation, or they were indifferent, or they were too deferential to management."

Gail Asper 

Protesters gathered outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on June 26 to protest the Nakba exhibit. (Rudi Pawlychyn/CBC)

 

"My dad never had a problem with telling the whole story. I think he'd be disgusted at how the telling of this story has become weaponized in the antisemitism game."

"The Palestinians were offered a state, their own state, and rejected it. Not only did they reject it, but they also attacked Israel and started a war. They lost the war. Start a war, lose a war and now I;m going to be the victim, just like October 7."

"It's putting the fox in the henhouse. They were all partisans. There are historical facts that are facts, not feelings. We've moved into the realm of feelings, not facts."

"This is a highly, highly sophisticated, organized propaganda machine that has been making the Palestinians victims for a very, very long time."

"And now they've got the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, hook, line and sinker, with no serious critical context or analysis." 

David Asper, Winnipeg lawyer, businessman

 

"As a national, publicly funded institution, the CMHR has yet to provide a meaningful resolution to the concerns raised through numerous communications and meetings aimed at upholding national standards and addressing community concerns."

"National institutions must be held accountable. At a time of rising antisemitism and extremism, the museum must not be instrumentalized in service of a dangerous political agenda."

"Its very legitimacy depends on its leadership's ability to demonstrate rigorous adhesion to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity." 

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. Photo by Richard White for Postmedia

 

Nothing, it appears, will dissuade the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) from proceeding with its monumentally controversial Nakba exhibit set to open on June 27. 'Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present' is meant to be an exploration of the 'ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians' -- according to the CMHR advance publicity -- through artwork, photographs, video testimonies and personal stories from Palestinian-Canadians. 

 

In response to a formal legal threat from Shurat HaDin, Israeli advocacy group, and calls emanating from Jewish organizations to pause and review the exhibit, Amanda Gaudes, the museum's spokesperson, and Isha Khan, the museum's chief executive officer, remain unmoved and determined to proceed with an exhibit that is geared to demonize a legitimate state, re-established on its own authentic ancestral land, which Palestinian colonizers claim as theirs and theirs alone. Palestinian public relations present themselves as hapless, helpless victims of Israeli 'occupation'. 

 

A victimhood that has, since 1948, plotted the overthrow of the Jewish state, initially with the military assistance of neighbouring Arab states, and more latterly reduced to the assistance of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, funding, arming and supporting terrorist groups whose sole reason for existence is their ongoing efforts to disable and destroy the state, in the process murdering as many Jews in Israel and abroad as they can plot and carry out under the banner of a global intifada dedicated 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free'.

 

Now, a museum that was the brainchild of a philanthropic Jewish family meant to educate the public primarily about the World War II Holocaust that systematically murdered six million European Jews through the deliberate planning and execution of a state mandate for a Final Solution reflecting Nazi Germany's ambition to destroy Jewish life throughout Europe, and by extension showcase egregious human rights violations worldwide, has been occupied and preempted by anti-Israel zealots whose scheme is to turn the museum's purpose on its head.

 

Late Winnipeg media magnate and Jewish philanthropist Israel (Izzy) Asper's focus on human rights and in particular the Holocaust through a dedicated public museum saw him directing a funding campaign to build that museum which opened in 2014. Private subscription and matching government funding saw its dedication to an aspiration of solemn and respectful historical rendering of actual ruinous events that contradicted the very existential human rights of entire populations, made the museum a reality. One that is now turned in on itself in a mockery of what it was meant to be.

 

Israel Asper's son decries the sacrilegious corruption that is taking place in the very institutional dream his father held dear. Instead of continuing its original purpose of memorializing the world's worst massive atrocity that brought antisemitism to the height of savage depravity the new exhibit  seeks to perpetuate more broadly and deeply for a credulous audience a classic narrative of fraud posing as a victim-oppressor tale for the ages. It is a tale of raw vengeance against a people returning to their ancestral home after millennia in exile in a world-wide diaspora that left them vulnerable to the world's most ancient curse.

 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has asked the museum board to commit to full transparency of the external review said by the CMHR to have commissioned; a stop to educational and resource materials associated with the exhibit until such time the review has been completed; and proper historically professional training for docents. "This exhibit risks legitimizing and normalizing these extreme narratives and those who use them to target Jews here in Canada", pointed out Gustavo Zentner.

 

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the Palestine Uprooted exhibit is still in development and will get the same academic and curatorial rigour as all exhibits. (CBC)

 

 

"At the end of the day, it's a spineless board. The CEO supports the exhibit, and the minister and the entire government are pandering for Muslim votes, and so they stand for nothing."

"The Liberal MO is to try to make everybody happy, say everything and stand for nothing."

"You know what the recipe for failure is? That."

"The safest thing is to say and do nothing. But the safest thing isn't always the right thing. And that's what I mean about leadership: if you're going to be a leader, sometimes people will be unhappy."

"And if you're not that leader, you shouldn't be in the game."

David Asper 

"My dad never had a problem with telling the whole story. I think he'd be disgusted at how the telling of this story has become weaponized in the antisemitism game."

"The Palestinians were offered a state, their own state, and rejected it. Not only did they reject it, but they also attacked Israel and started a war. They lost the war. Start a war, lose a war and now I;m going to be the victim, just like October 7."

"It's putting the fox in the henhouse. They were all partisans. There are historical facts that are facts, not feelings. We've moved into the realm of feelings, not facts."

"This is a highly, highly sophisticated, organized propaganda machine that has been making the Palestinians victims for a very, very long time."

"And now they've got the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, hook, line and sinker, with no serious critical context or analysis." 

David Asper, Winnipeg lawyer, businessman

 

"As a national, publicly funded institution, the CMHR has yet to provide a meaningful resolution to the concerns raised through numerous communications and meetings aimed at upholding national standards and addressing community concerns."

"National institutions must be held accountable. At a time of rising antisemitism and extremism, the museum must not be instrumentalized in service of a dangerous political agenda."

"Its very legitimacy depends on its leadership's ability to demonstrate rigorous adhesion to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity." 

Gustavo Zentner, vice-president, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. Photo by Richard White for Postmedia

 

Nothing, it appears, will dissuade the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) from proceeding with its monumentally controversial Nakba exhibit set to open on June 27. 'Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present' is meant to be an exploration of the 'ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians' -- according to the CMHR advance publicity -- through artwork, photographs, video testimonies and personal stories from Palestinian-Canadians. 

 

In response to a formal legal threat from Shurat HaDin, Israeli advocacy group, and calls emanating from Jewish organizations to pause and review the exhibit, Amanda Gaudes, the museum's spokesperson, and Isha Khan, the museum's chief executive officer, remain unmoved and determined to proceed with an exhibit that is geared to demonize a legitimate state, re-established on its own authentic ancestral land, which Palestinian colonizers claim as theirs and theirs alone. Palestinian public relations present themselves as hapless, helpless victims of Israeli 'occupation'. 

 

A victimhood that has, since 1948, plotted the overthrow of the Jewish state, initially with the military assistance of neighbouring Arab states, and more latterly reduced to the assistance of Iran, Qatar and Turkey, funding, arming and supporting terrorist groups whose sole reason for existence is their ongoing efforts to disable and destroy the state, in the process murdering as many Jews in Israel and abroad as they can plot and carry out under the banner of a global intifada dedicated 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free'.

 

Now, a museum that was the brainchild of a philanthropic Jewish family meant to educate the public primarily about the World War II Holocaust that systematically murdered six million European Jews through the deliberate planning and execution of a state mandate for a Final Solution reflecting Nazi Germany's ambition to destroy Jewish life throughout Europe, and by extension showcase egregious human rights violations worldwide, has been occupied and preempted by anti-Israel zealots whose scheme is to turn the museum's purpose on its head.

 

Late Winnipeg media magnate and Jewish philanthropist Israel (Izzy) Asper's focus on human rights and in particular the Holocaust through a dedicated public museum saw him directing a funding campaign to build that museum which opened in 2014. Private subscription and matching government funding saw its dedication to an aspiration of solemn and respectful historical rendering of actual ruinous events that contradicted the very existential human rights of entire populations, made the museum a reality. One that is now turned in on itself in a mockery of what it was meant to be.

 

Israel Asper's son decries the sacrilegious corruption that is taking place in the very institutional dream his father held dear. Instead of continuing its original purpose of memorializing the world's worst massive atrocity that brought antisemitism to the height of savage depravity the new exhibit  seeks to perpetuate more broadly and deeply for a credulous audience a classic narrative of fraud posing as a victim-oppressor tale for the ages. It is a tale of raw vengeance against a people returning to their ancestral home after millennia in exile in a world-wide diaspora that left them vulnerable to the world's most ancient curse.

 

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has asked the museum board to commit to full transparency of the external review said by the CMHR to have commissioned; a stop to educational and resource materials associated with the exhibit until such time the review has been completed; and proper historically professional training for docents. "This exhibit risks legitimizing and normalizing these extreme narratives and those who use them to target Jews here in Canada", pointed out Gustavo Zentner.

 

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, said the Palestine Uprooted exhibit is still in development and will get the same academic and curatorial rigour as all exhibits. (CBC)

 

 

"At the end of the day, it's a spineless board. The CEO supports the exhibit, and the minister and the entire government are pandering for Muslim votes, and so they stand for nothing."

"The Liberal MO is to try to make everybody happy, say everything and stand for nothing."

"You know what the recipe for failure is? That."

"The safest thing is to say and do nothing. But the safest thing isn't always the right thing. And that's what I mean about leadership: if you're going to be a leader, sometimes people will be unhappy."

"And if you're not that leader, you shouldn't be in the game."

David Asper