Heritage Minister Marc Miller said Monday the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg has erred in how it curated an exhibit about displaced Palestinians.
The federal cabinet minister said in an interview with The Canadian Press on Monday that the museum should change how it portrays the current conflict between Israel and Palestinians and update the museum’s oversight.
“It isn’t up to me to speak to, or insert myself in, the curation of any particular exhibit. But manifestly, you cannot deny the fact that this is an exhibit that is born in controversy — and perhaps some of it could have been avoided,” Miller said.
Miller said he visited the Winnipeg museum Thursday morning and was troubled by how the exhibit portrayed the conflict that started in October 2023.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian militants from Hamas — which Canada has listed as a terrorist entity for more than two decades — and its partners killed 1,200 civilians and soldiers in Israel.
That attack prompted Israel to bombard the Gaza Strip in a relentless war that has killed roughly 73,000 people in the territory, according to data sourced in part from Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.
Miller said there are flaws in the museum exhibit that should be addressed.
“There are some words in there that are regrettable. Not identifying Hamas as a terrorist organization is, I think, a failure. And not clearly stating that, for example, Hamas intended to kill Jews is, I think, an unfortunate error in curation and should be rectified,” he said.
The exhibit, which opened to the public Saturday, focuses on the Nakba — the forcible displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians from the region during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe.
One of the exhibit’s panels discussing Israel’s military occupation of Gaza says that after “the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel launched a large-scale military campaign in Gaza.”
The museum says it has referred to the Oct. 7 attack as a terrorist attack “on numerous occasions” and there is no doubt the intent of the attack was to murder Jews, a spokesperson told CBC News in a written statement on Monday.
The museum’s research has shown people of other nationalities and religious identities were also murdered by Hamas during the attack, which “informed the use of the word ‘people’ in our exhibit text,” the spokesperson said.
Feedback on the exhibit is being collected, and the museum recognizes there are “many opinions” over the content, the spokesperson said. The museum has established a content revision process within its curation team, where it forwarded Miller’s concerns.
The exhibit has been in the works for four years and has become another flashpoint between Canadian groups who support Israelis and those who support Palestinians, as well as between federal Liberals and Conservatives.
Jewish groups and the Israeli government mounted a campaign to have the exhibit reworked or cancelled, arguing it lacks context and threatens to further fuel anti-Jewish hate in Canada.
‘Surprised at some allegations’: Miller
Opponents say the museum failed to explain the role of Arab states in expelling Jews and fighting those who ultimately established the State of Israel in 1948.
Arab and Muslim groups have hailed the exhibit as a rare attempt to examine hard truths that have shaped the current violence in the Middle East.
The museum’s CEO told The Canadian Press earlier this month that many exhibits are meant to tell one community’s story and raise awareness, instead of telling a comprehensive story about multi-faceted events.
Miller did not weigh in on whether the exhibit needed to include more information about Arab states in the 1940s. He instead said the museum should have allowed its board to see the exhibit before it opened publicly.
“You could layer on many other complexities in and around 1948, leading up to the present day. But I do have to be careful as the minister in charge of an independent organization like the museum,” Miller said.
The museum’s only Jewish trustee, Mark Berlin, resigned last week and said he was not given a chance to view the exhibit in advance.
Berlin said last week the museum’s board generally oversees the management of the museum instead of its operations or curation, and he argued the museum had not done an adequate job of consulting with mainstream Jewish groups.
“Any failure of curation is one that really should be directed to the board that does need to do its job,” Miller said.
“I’m surprised at some allegations that the board was not able to see the exhibit beforehand because that would, to me, seem like an error in governance.”
The museum’s board is regularly briefed on its plans for exhibits, which included “presentations on the interpretive plan, schematic design, and detailed reports about risk associated with the exhibit,” the institution’s spokesperson said.
The role of the museum’s board, laid out under Canada’s Museums Act, says the board’s priorities are to establish the museum’s strategic direction, safeguard its resources, monitor corporate performance and report to the Crown, the spokesperson said.
Miller also said it’s unfortunate an exhibit meant to explain how Palestinians have experienced history has been greeted by an uproar.
“It’s just regrettable that that exhibit has been born in controversy,” he said.
“As modest as this exhibit is — it’s only two panels — I believe it should be accurate, and I believe there are many groups, principally Muslim or Palestinian, that are suffering through a lot of trauma from what they are seeing with the war in Gaza. And this exhibit is intended to highlight a plight that has been going on at least since 1948.”
Palestinians displaced in the late 1940s to countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and the territories that Israel occupies are defined as refugees by the United Nations, as are their offspring. The Israeli government has repeatedly criticized that designation.
