{"id":2981,"date":"2026-08-03T03:35:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T03:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futureknowledge.in\/?p=2981"},"modified":"2026-08-03T03:35:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T03:35:36","slug":"breach-of-trust-how-a-nakba-exhibit-roiled-canadas-rights-museum-and-the-woman-who-helped-build-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureknowledge.in\/?p=2981","title":{"rendered":"Breach of trust: How a 'Nakba' exhibit roiled Canada's rights museum \u2014 and the woman who helped build it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gail<\/p>\n

When Gail Asper started drawing up the initial plans for the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in the early 2000s, her efforts prompted numerous ethnic communities and political interest groups to start vying for special consideration. <\/p>\n

Indigenous leaders wanted a particular focus on missing and murdered women. Ukrainian Canadian groups campaigned for acknowledgement of Canada\u2019s imprisonment of their people during the First World War, and of later Soviet Union attacks against Ukraine in the 1930s. By the time the Winnipeg-based museum opened in 2014, it had seemingly become a magnet for every activist cause<\/a> under the sun, setting off clusters of criss-crossing protest<\/a> . <\/p>\n

Despite the tumult, Asper said the museum was able to keep its grand opening relatively quiet through regular consultation with the various groups. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of concerns before we opened, for sure, but we opened smoothly because we did all the work and we listened, and we changed, we revised, we respected communities\u2019 concerns,\u201d Asper said. <\/p>\n

But 12 years after its launch, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR) finds itself embroiled in the very sort of prolonged controversy it had long avoided. <\/p>\n

In June, the museum unveiled an exhibit<\/a> called \u201cPalestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present,\u201d which describes the experiences of Palestinian people who were forced from their homes starting after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and continuing to today. The exhibit kicked off a loud public outcry, especially from the Jewish community, over what many view as the curator\u2019s failure to include relevant facts about the ongoing conflict and the impact it\u2019s had on Jewish people. <\/p>\n

Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller, whose department oversees the CMHR, has weighed in with his own criticism of the \u201cNakba\u201d exhibit, saying it has \u201cerrors\u201d that \u201cmust be rectified.\u201d A CMHR board member resigned due to what he saw as the exhibit\u2019s lack of intellectual rigour, thrusting it further into controversy. <\/p>\n

The matter has been particularly troubling for Asper, the daughter of former Canadian media magnate Israel \u201cIzzy\u201d Asper, who was critical in establishing the museum. The Asper Foundation donated the initial $24 million to get the museum off the ground, and organizers behind the effort lobbied three separate prime ministers \u2014 Jean Chr\u00e9tien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper \u2014 to push the project forward. <\/p>\n

Years later, she worries that public concerns about the exhibit\u2019s alleged slant could taint the standing of the public institution, which is majority funded by the federal government. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad always said the most important asset you have is your reputation,\u201d Asper said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that this exhibit is going to have a lot of people lose faith in the museum\u2019s trustworthiness for being an honest purveyor of accurate historical and current-day information.\u201d <\/p>\n

She said the museum piece \u201cdeliberately omits key, relevant facts about the conflict\u201d that are crucial to understanding its full context. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Placed along a brief 12-metre stretch of the towering seven-story museum, the Nakba exhibit includes a collection of photos, video testimonies, family heirlooms and artworks that describe the plight of Palestinian people who have fled ongoing conflict in the region. Among the artifacts are things like keys to Palestinian homes that the owners left behind, and an orange peel from a former Palestinian family-run orchard that was abandoned amid the chaos of war. <\/p>\n

The exhibit begins at the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 \u2014 when Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Syria invaded Israel in response to the United Nations partition that had established the new Israeli nation \u2014 and ends in the current day. Around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes due to the war launched by five Arab nations. The mass displacement has been dubbed the Nakba, Arabic for \u201ccatastrophe.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Some argue that the photos, items and testimonies tell a woefully one-sided story. Mark Berlin, a former CMHR board member who quit the role over the exhibit<\/a> , said Jewish people have been all but scrubbed out of the exhibit, and is calling on the museum to make corrections. <\/p>\n

Roughly 850,000 Jews in the region have also been forced to flee their homes due to ongoing strife, Berlin points out, but those people are never mentioned in the exhibit. Berlin also notes that more than two million Arab people still live in Israel today, a fact that he said could have offered useful context. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of the Nakba is a complex one,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not reduced to a quick little soundbite. There\u2019s a lot of nuance with it, there\u2019s a lot of history that preceded it, and a lot of history that developed over the years of the Nakba.\u201d <\/p>\n

Berlin also takes issue with the portion related to the modern-day displacement of Palestinian people. The exhibit mentions the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre that kicked off the latest war in Gaza, but victims of the mass killing are referred to vaguely as \u201cpeople,\u201d and not as Jewish Israelis who were targeted for their Jewish heritage. <\/p>\n

\u201cHamas terrorists launched the greatest large-scale massacre against Jewish civilians since World War II, where over 1,160 or so Jewish babies and children and mothers and young people were brutally murdered in the most horrific fashion,\u201d he said. \u201cThe failure to describe that horror, and then simply say, \u2018Oh, ya, these people were displaced,\u201d is an error in judgment.\u201d <\/p>\n

CMHR chief executive Isha Khan defended the Nakba exhibit, saying it was explicitly designed to show the experience of a specific group of people through stories of its suffering. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe frame, or the scope, of the exhibit is to centre Palestinian experiences of forced displacement,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s told through their stories, through their lens, and that\u2019s an approach the museum takes in a variety of other places.\u201d <\/p>\n

Previous exhibits that existed in the same physical space as the Nakba had similarly focused on the experiences of specific people, Khan said. One such exhibit focused on the plight of Syrian refugees, another on the sex trafficking of two Ugandan girls. <\/p>\n

Khan said that those displays shouldn\u2019t be understood to come at the expense of other groups or other stories, and noted that the Nakba is just one of many exhibits in the museum \u2014 including a large gallery dedicated to the Jewish holocaust. <\/p>\n

Khan said the museum\u2019s leadership \u201cshare the concern around rising antisemitism,\u201d and said they are currently reviewing some of the complaints against the Nakba exhibit. She did not confirm whether it would change the exhibit in response to those complaints. The brief texts displayed alongside photos and artifacts have been rigorously fact-checked, she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery word in the exhibit is backed up by credible research,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had our research sources academically reviewed internally, and then we took an additional step to have them reviewed externally.\u201d <\/p>\n

She said the museum is planning a future exhibit that focuses on Jewish people. <\/p>\n

Critics, including Asper, Berlin and Gail Lord \u2014 a long-time museum planner who was also crucial in establishing the CMHR \u2014 all said that they weren\u2019t opposed in principle to an exhibit that focuses on Palestinian victims. However, they said that the Palestinian-Israeli issue is uniquely sensitive and politically fraught, and therefore deserving of equal treatment in any exhibit. <\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

The three also pointed to what they view as shortcomings on the part of the museum\u2019s board of directors, led by chair Benjie Nycum, to properly assess the details of the exhibit before it went public. <\/p>\n

Berlin said board members were hesitant to press the executive team and curators for more information about the exhibit, with a few members quietly raising concerns about not knowing more details before it went public. However, about three-quarters of members were either supportive or neutral toward the exhibit, and Berlin said his worries about how it might be received were broadly dismissed. <\/p>\n

Khan said the leadership team regularly discussed the exhibit with board members before it went public. <\/p>\n

The Nakba exhibit was curated by Isabelle Masson, and Shayna Plaut acted as its director of research. The National Post tried to contact Masson and Plaut through the museum, but its request to interview them was not addressed. <\/p>\n

Nycum did not respond directly to the National Post\u2019s questions. In a written statement attributed to Nycum, the museum\u2019s spokesperson said the board\u2019s duties consisted of managing the museum\u2019s strategic direction, handling resources, monitoring performance and reporting to the federal government. The statement said the \u201cboard supports the museum\u2019s approach taken with respect to this exhibit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Asper, who has an honorary position on the board but no voting power, said the situation suggests there was a failure of governance on the part of the board for not having better oversight of the issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the board clearly didn\u2019t understand the risks of doing inaccurate exhibits on volatile subjects,\u201d she said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t understand the impact it could have on their reputation, or they were indifferent, or they were too deferential to management.\u201d <\/p>\n

The human rights museum\u2019s governance systems have faced scrutiny before. In 2018, the Auditor General found \u201cweakness\u201d in the museums systems and procedures for ensuring that \u201ccontent was balanced and accurate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Weeks after the exhibit was unveiled, it\u2019s unclear whether the museum will make alterations down the road. Khan said that while they are reviewing complaints, they will \u201cmove at the pace of a museum, which is deliberate and thoughtful and intentional.\u201d The CMHR hasn\u2019t yet issued a public statement on the exhibit itself. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Minister Miller said that it \u201cis not the role of the federal government to dictate programming at Canada\u2019s national museums.\u201d <\/p>\n

Asper, whose father had the initial idea to build the CMHR, said the reticence on the part of the museum is disappointing. <\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Asper announced that her family was temporarily pulling any funding for the museum over the exhibit. She told the National Post that she was also considering stepping down from her honorary board position. <\/p>\n