{"id":754318,"date":"2026-06-22T20:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/754318\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T20:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:33:11","slug":"canadian-museum-for-human-rights-trustee-resigns-cites-one-sided-palestinian-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/754318\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Museum for Human Rights trustee resigns, cites \u2018one-sided\u2019 Palestinian exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Displaced Palestinians walk along a road in Jabalia, as they leave areas near Gaza City where they had taken refuge, in January, 2025. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ upcoming exhibit focuses on the late 1940s displacement of Palestinians.OMAR AL-QATTAA\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A trustee at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is quitting the organization\u2019s board over a coming exhibit about the late 1940s displacement of Palestinians, saying its lack of vital historical context will stir up hostility against Jewish people.<\/p>\n

Mark Berlin submitted his resignation on Monday in a letter addressed to Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, and Benjie Nycum, the museum\u2019s board chair. He has served as trustee since 2018.<\/p>\n

The exhibit, opening this Saturday, focuses on people affected by the Nakba, \u2013 Arabic for \u201ccatastrophe\u201d \u2013 when around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced between 1947 and 1949 during fighting over control of what is now Israel.<\/p>\n

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In his resignation letter, Prof. Berlin said the museum\u2019s exhibit fails to include the expulsion of roughly 850,000 Jews from Arab states alongside its account of Palestinian displacement, even though the two events began around the same time. Jews in Arab countries were expelled or forced to flee due to harsh persecution after the state of Israel was established in May, 1948.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of the Palestinian displacement should be told,\u201d he said in the letter. \u201cHowever, telling the story with a one-sided perspective chosen by the Museum serves to deepen division and contributes to further hostility toward Jews in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview, Prof. Berlin added: \u201cThere\u2019s the Palestinian Nakba and the Jewish Nakba, and the fact is that these are not severable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Winnipeg-based human rights museum is a Crown corporation set up in 2008 under then-prime minister Stephen Harper and it operates at arm\u2019s length from Ottawa. It receives close to $30-million annually from the federal government to cover its operating costs.<\/p>\n

Prof. Berlin is an international human rights lawyer who served as senior adviser on the Middle East to former attorney-general Irwin Cotler, and is currently a professor of practice at McGill University.<\/p>\n

In an interview, he described himself as \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d and noted when he served in the Canadian government, as director-general of international legal programs, he helped set up a prosecutorial service for Palestinians and opened and staffed an office in Ramallah.<\/p>\n

The Globe has reached out to the museum for comment.<\/p>\n

Mr. Miller\u2019s office declined to comment on the reasons Prof. Berlin gave for resigning but thanked him for his contributions as trustee. <\/p>\n

\u201cLike all Canadians, we expect the Board of Trustees to continue its important work in fulfilling the mission of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and to remain representative of the diversity of Canadian voices as the vacancy is filled in the coming months,\u201d Alisson L\u00e9vesque, director of communications for the minister, said in an e-mailed statement.<\/p>\n

Some Jewish groups, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B\u2019nai Brith Canada and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, have also raised concern that the exhibit could fuel antisemitism by not providing more historical context.<\/p>\n

Prof. Berlin\u2019s letter lays out what he calls the \u201cundeniable historical facts\u201d: the 1947 United Nations partition plan proposed separate Jewish and Arab states in what was called Mandatory Palestine at the time. \u201cThe Jewish leadership accepted the plan while the surrounding Arab states and local leadership rejected it. Five Arab states immediately launched a war against the newly established state of Israel,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAs a result, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced as were hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the rights museum\u2019s mandate under statute is \u201cexplore the subject of human rights, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada in order to enhance the public\u2019s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection and dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s chief executive Isha Khan last week said she\u2019s heard the concerns but that the exhibit isn\u2019t trying to cover the whole history of the time period.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a modest-sized exhibit,\u201d Ms. Khan said. \u201cIt isn\u2019t a historical retrospective of 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other exhibits at the museum, it tells one community\u2019s story with the aim of creating broader awareness, Ms. Khan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about Palestinian-Canadians sharing their stories of forced displacement, intended to help us understand other stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prof. Berlin said he was unsuccessful in repeated efforts to convince the museum to add more historical background to Nakba exhibit. He said he had even suggested to museum leadership that they install placards outside the display area that offered more context.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe controversy surrounding this exhibit, and my unsuccessful efforts to fight against what I believe to be institutional antizionism and to bring a more balanced perspective to the exhibit\u2019s development, has undermined my confidence in the museum as a place the Canadian public can trust to present an accurate historical exhibit, replacing trust with ideology,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In his letter, Prof. Berlin said the museum has \u201crepeatedly rebuffed requests for over two years from the Jewish community to be meaningfully consulted, despite such consultations having occurred in connection with previous exhibits.\u201d He acknowledged in an interview that there have been conversations between the museum and Jewish groups but said these did not constitute consultations. <\/p>\n

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He said in his opinion the museum is conducting itself differently in this case then it did when it faced criticism from Ukrainian-Canadians over how it would address the Holodomor, a Soviet state-engineered famine in Ukraine that killed millions. \u201cThey were able to accommodate after two years of consultation, and it changed the look, feel and face of what had been initially planned,\u201d Prof. Berlin said of the museum.<\/p>\n

The Nakba exhibit, taking up about 12 metres of an existing gallery, will tell stories through video testimonies, photographs, art, objects and writing.<\/p>\n

Ms. Khan said the museum consulted widely but that any decisions about exhibits rests with the curatorial team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re accountable to the public, and we listen and we reflect. But ultimately, those decisions are all made by us.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she has also met with leaders of Jewish organizations across the country and shares their concerns about rising antisemitism.<\/p>\n

Ms. Khan said the museum has added more programming and exhibits about antisemitism in the past two years and has committed to telling stories about Jewish displacement in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actively working to combat antisemitism. We\u2019ve been unequivocal that that is our responsibility as a museum for human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

With files from Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Displaced Palestinians walk along a road in Jabalia, as they leave areas near…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-754318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}