Human-rights museum founder raises concerns about upcoming Nakba exhibit

When the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg opens a show about Palestinian displacement this weekend, one of its founders may be standing outside protesting.

Philanthropist Gail Asper, who led the museum project after the 2003 death of her father, media owner Izzy Asper, fears that the exhibition about the exile of Palestinians from what is now Israel lacks historical context and might inflame antisemitism in Canada.

“I definitely would protest. I am not going to attend the opening,” she said, although she added she does plan to see the show. It opens to the general public Saturday, after a launch on Friday. “I’m never the sort of person that wants a book banned before I’ve read it, so I will go and I will take a look.”

The show, entitled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present,

is devoted to the Palestinian experience of exile after 1947 and uses photographs, videos and objects to relay first-person accounts. It has become controversial in the Jewish community because it does not cover the history surrounding the establishment of Israel, nor the displacement of Jews from Arab lands after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Ms. Asper, who is an honorary board member of the museum, which opened in September, 2014, but no longer has any direct consultative role, said she is evaluating the content based on the museum’s website and the board’s refusal to consider complaints about that content.

“I actually did go and talk to the board. I reminded them … the museum was to be a place of education and enlightenment and building bridges, not fomenting discord,” she said.

On Monday, museum trustee Mark Berlin resigned his position making similar complaints that the show was one-sided. Mr. Berlin, a human-rights lawyer who describes himself as pro-Palestinian, said the Palestinian story should be told, but excluding the Jewish story may lead to increased hostility toward Jews in Canada.

The museum has defended the exhibition saying that the focus on the human-rights abuses suffered by one community does not negate those suffered by another. The museum’s chief executive officer, Isha Khan, has said that the show is not anti-Zionist and does not challenge the legitimacy of the state of Israel.

She has responded to Mr. Berlin’s criticisms saying the opinion of the Jewish community is not monolithic and some support the show.

“This exhibit about the experience of the Palestinian-Canadians and the human-rights impacts that they have had through their forced displacement over time is a necessary, important part of not only Canada’s collective memory, but to me what all Canadians need right now is opportunity to learn and to reflect and to dialogue,” Ms. Khan said in a Monday interview with The Globe and Mail.

Ms. Asper, however, feels that a lack of historical context in the show will fuel antisemitism in Canada at a time when the Jewish community feels particularly vulnerable. She said she has raised her concerns with the museum twice, once when the show was first discussed in 2022 when she was still serving on the museum board and once last November when the show was announced. She said she was told by Ms. Khan that the show would be about the feelings of displacement, not the history of the establishment of the Israeli state.

“History museums need to be scrupulously careful and have scholarly rigour,” Ms. Asper said. “You can have the feelings. The feelings are what give you the empathy, but you have to have the basic facts and context.”

Ms. Asper recalled that her father, who launched the campaign for a national museum of human rights in the 1990s, was asked in 2003 whether there would be a show about Palestinian displacement and he replied: “That’s a museum decision. I’m not going to be running the museum.” But he added any such exhibition would need to mention the historical context, including the displacement of Jews.

Ms. Khan said the museum is grateful to the Asper family for their original vision and the important mandate.

“The Asper family led the fundraising effort to establish the museum, and today it’s a national public institution with that mandate, and this work falls squarely within that mandate.”