Despite the manufactured controversy, the 12-metre exhibit is the first time the story of Palestinian dispossession is being told in a national institution
An excellent exhibit, given the past controversy and history of this museum.
I lived in Winnipeg while it was proposed and built, with early critics concerned over the one-sidedness of isreali displays and a lack of indigenous history - especially heinous considering how first peoples have been treated in Canada.
The article mentions the resignation of a board member over the exhibit. For more information, you can find his side of the story here: https://thehub.ca/2026/06/29/why-i-resigned-from-the-canadian-museum-for-human-rights/
I don’t support his take on it. For lack of a better term, the dude sounds butthurt as hell. It’s telling how easily a noted right wing publication like The Hub picked up his opinion piece.
His entire argument is “but we forgot to take into account the israeli point of view!!”, which can also be interpolated to any holocaust exhibit: “but we forgot to take into account the nazi point of view!!”
I wouldn’t make a nazi comparison because they were refugees. Still, refugees or not, it was an invasion on foreign soil and the Palestinians treated them as invaders.
I’d liken it more to settlers complaining tales about the trail of tears don’t represent their side of the story.
Worth knowing that most of the immigration preceded the Holocaust, and Palestinians treated them as illegal immigrants (which they were), not as invaders.
Look, that same refugee trope founding myth is what north America used with the pilgrims, so it’s beneficial to deconstruct that. Because it is the same founding myth of Israel.
It’s also worth reading early writings from Zionists about the “type” of Jewish people the Zionists wanted for the new state. They basically believed that the refugees were too poor and of the wrong mentality - essentially tainting what they were trying to build. Literally a screening office was setup to allow or disallow certain types of Jews. Zionists only acquiesced because they needed more people to bolster their numbers and reasons for expansion
https://palestinenexus.com/articles/eugenicism
From the late 19th century through the 1950s, Zionist leaders adopted a selective immigration policy designed to exclude ‘undesirable’ Jews. The goal of the Zionist movement was to build a Jewish state in a Palestinian Arab land, and that required Jewish capitalists, skilled laborers, professionals and fighters, not children, elderly people or refugees. The Zionist leadership rejected persecuted, disabled, destitute, sick, diseased and elderly Jews because they were persecuted, disabled, destitute, sick, diseased and elderly. They instead prioritized what they called “halutzim,” or young, healthy Zionist ideologues willing to sacrifice their youth, capital, labor and life for the cause. This is the eugenist history of Zionism, in brief.
You’re right, my history around that time is piecemeal. Thanks for the extra context and information.
Thank you for sharing this, I’m not Canadian and would have missed that this is happening, and I’m glad I get to know about it
