The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the most striking piece of architecture in Winnipeg. Traversing the seven floors with irregular spaces and varied lighting, the visitor is meant to “progress upwards from darkness to light—reflecting our hopes for human rights education”, according to the museum’s website.
Originally, it was a private Holocaust museum. But to gain federal funding as a national museum from 2007 required a broader focus on human rights, generating battles over which human rights abuses would be presented. Today, the permanent Holocaust gallery covers an entire floor, the largest on a single topic. A second gallery commemorates five genocides, with the Holocaust again represented together with Rwanda, Armenia, Ukrainian Holodomor and that carried out by Serbian forces in Srebrenica.
When I visited in June, I saw exhibitions on a wide range of topics, from labour rights to queer histories, from First Nations to the Polish solidarity movement. Since then, a small new display entitled “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present” has opened. Finally, after nearly two decades of negotiation, planning and advocacy, a small amount of light is spared to shine on this suppressed genocide.
The twelve-metre-long exhibit, within 4,366 square metres of exhibition space, includes some artwork, a small collection of objects and perhaps 600 words of text. Carefully researched and curated, it takes about fifteen minutes to view. The language is restrained. El Jones, writing at The Breach website, describes how is says that Palestinians are “shaped by wars” in which the perpetrator is not named; “present-day violence” simply “occurs”, without any agency.
Such an exhibition would not normally draw much international attention. But for months, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), right-wing media and the Israeli ambassador have campaigned to delay or cancel the exhibit, to change the wording, to insert what they call “context”. The heritage minister also tried to intervene.
On the opening night, hundreds demonstrated outside, holding placards denying the Nakba or declaring “Nothing about us without us”, epitomising the Jewish Zionist position that they are the only arbiters of conflicts in the Middle East.
Contrary to claims that the Jewish community wasn’t consulted, several Jewish organisations did contribute to the exhibition and supported the Palestinians attending the opening night against the demonstrators.
A protestor from a Christian Zionist organisation, complained to the Canadian Jewish News: “It’s one side of the story ... Israelis have been completely ignored, discounted”. You have to wonder which planet he lives on.
The hysterical attacks have ironically resulted in vastly more publicity than the exhibit otherwise would have achieved. And the fact that the exhibition went ahead represents a small but important victory in the ongoing international culture wars over Palestine.
Community organiser Bassam Hozaima criticised the demand for the Palestinian story to be vetted by those who seek to silence and negate that very story:
“The notion that Palestinians should not be able to tell their stories of displacement, suffering, and oppression without the approval of their oppressors is bizarre and a clear example of the racism and chauvinism that the Palestinian community is constantly being subjected to.”
A leading member of the Winnipeg chapter of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Harold Shuster, explained the cause of the hysteria to Red Flag. In a recent letter to members, the outgoing chair of CIJA stated that they “have given up on trying to fight antisemitism and instead need to focus their efforts on fighting antisemites”. As Shuster elaborates, “In the minds of those institutions, everybody who doesn’t share their unequivocal support for Israel is an antisemite or motivated by Jew hatred, and they attack them as such”.
CIJA has given up fighting antisemitism just as the far right is growing in Canada as it is in Australia and elsewhere and with the same themes—immigration, racist replacement theories, etc. According to an article in The Conversation, “cultural, ethnic and social polarization are constantly underlined, and presented in a manner that justifies the repression of various populations deemed to be dangerous”. The attacks on the Nakba exhibit fits right in with this approach by far-right groups.
From the beginning, the role of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights was contested. As Jones explains, “Winnipeg ... has a storied history of radical labour activism”, starting with the general strike of 1919. And migrants have been at the centre of these struggles. He continues:
“In tension with this radical strain of grassroots human rights activism, and perhaps specifically in response to it, Winnipeg has also developed human rights institutions that substituted ‘fairness’ and ‘dialogue’ for substantial criticism and action.”
Cultural institutions have been the focus of anti-Palestinian attacks worldwide. Museums might like to think they are oases of calm and reflection secluded from a troubled world. But we have seen with the British Museum that this is not so—capitulating to lobbing, that grand old repository recently removed the word “Palestine” from a number of exhibits.
The opposition to the Nakba exhibition has galvanised activism again to defend those very institutions that considered themselves sacrosanct. Let’s hope with their support it stays open.
