Hymie Rubenstein ——Bio and Archives--December 3, 2025

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An increasingly controversial exhibit, Palestine Uprooted: Nakba, Past and Present, is planned to be unveiled at Winnipeg’s Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMFHR) in June 2026.

The Museum is launching a new exhibit examining the Nakba, a period beginning in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were displaced, either voluntarily or forcibly, in the war over Israel’s creation.

Drawing on the oral histories of the Palestinian diaspora in Canada, the mixed-media display is set to remain part of the Winnipeg-based Museum’s standing galleries for at least two years, its chief executive officer, Isha Khan, told The Globe and Mail.

She said a team of researchers, academics, interpretive planners and designers has been working for several years to curate the exhibit, which will combine different media and materials to recount the Nakba through videos, static art, the written word and interactive presentations.

Some groups and individuals, even a few Jewish ones, have praised the proposed exhibit. Others have been damning it in petitions and appeals to the Museum’s board, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and even the Prime Minister.

Several prominent Canadian Jewish groups condemned the planned exhibit, stating that it undermines the legitimacy of Israeli statehood. One of them has withdrawn from future collaborations.

The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (JHCWC) announced it would hold its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony elsewhere, away from the Museum. The group said it was “tremendously concerned” that the exhibit “will lack balanced scholarly research and will ignore key issues of the historical and current geopolitical reality.”

The JHCWC also expressed concern the exhibit could overlook non-Jewish minorities who are Israeli citizens, including Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze, Circassians and Samaritans – people who hold positions in the judiciary, parliament, health care and the military, and that their equal rights under Israeli law complicate common interpretations of the Nakba

It also expressed concern about a lack of meaningful consultation with the “organized Jewish community.”

Accordingly, the JHCWC said it is ending its partnerships with the Winnipeg museum, including those for the development of additional Holocaust galleries, due to the new exhibit.

“We are concerned that the museum may present an unbalanced view of history – devoid of scholarly best practices,” the Centre said in a statement.

Likewise, in a post on X by Gustavo Zentner, Vice President for Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, issued the following statement:

“When the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs........

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