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Human rights museum board member resigns over 'one-sided' exhibit on displaced Palestinians
A trustee for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights says he has resigned from the Winnipeg facility's board over an upcoming exhibit about displaced Palestinians.
Mark Berlin submitted his resignation in a letter to federal Heritage Minister Marc Miller and the museum's board chair. In it, Berlin accuses the museum of putting forth "ideology" instead of an accurate history.
"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," Berlin wrote in his letter, shared with media outlets. "Presenting the Palestinian displacement of 1948 without its proper historical and political context offers a narrow, one-sided argument of history that can only deepen the distrust and animosity that currently exists between Jews and Muslims in this country."
A trustee of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights resigned over a planned exhibit about displaced Palestinians.
Berlin, a professor at McGill University's international development institute with a background in human rights law, argued the exhibit fails to explain that Arab states fought those who ultimately established the State of Israel in 1948 and then expelled Jews to Israel.
The exhibit, set to open Saturday, focuses on people affected by the forced displacement of about 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine war — an event known as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Berlin criticized the exhibit for not acknowledging the estimated 850,000 Jewish people who were forced to flee Arab countries in the years after the establishment of Israel.
He said the exhibit does not adequately portray the fact Arab nations rejected a United Nations plan to establish the countries of Palestine and Israel and took up arms in the conflict, with the resulting fighting causing the mass displacement of Palestinians.
Berlin argued the museum isn't fulfilling its mandate to unite Canadians and argues there is "institutional antizionism" at play. "The museum has a statutory and moral obligation to tell the full truth, not to sacrifice it at the altar of politics," he wrote, suggesting the exhibit was "politically motivated."
In a statement, Miller's office thanked Berlin for his contributions and said he would be replaced.
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