Honouring the memory of these displaced communities is especially important now, given that this history is often glaringly excluded from discussions about the Middle East. Just days ago, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) announced a controversial Nakba exhibit that advances an activist political agenda and excludes the lived experiences of Jews displaced from their homes. In so doing, it betrays CMHR’s own professional responsibilities and mandate as a national, publicly funded museum.
“Had CMHR chosen to engage in meaningful consultation, it would have learned that the 1948 war was the result of Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state and the years that followed brought displacement, loss, and suffering to the region’s Arabs and Jews alike,” said, Noah Shack, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). “Museums should be anchored in history, not politics – this is especially important at a time when radical activists and violent extremists have exploited the conflict to spread hate and target Canadians.”
Earlier this week, CIJA launched a letter campaign that mobilized thousands of Canadians via ActionHub.ca to call on CMHR CEO Isha Khan to uphold the Museum’s mandate, be transparent about its decision-making, and establish a credible consultation process before any further development proceeds on the exhibit.
Today, CIJA is also launching a new initiative to gather and amplify testimonies from Jewish Canadians whose families were displaced from the Middle East and North Africa.
“The political exhibit erases stories like mine,” said Dr. Caroline Bassoon-Zaltzman, who was forced to leave Iraq as a teenager. “Jews were violently uprooted – forcibly displaced from Middle Eastern and North African lands. We cannot allow this same hateful ideology that caused so much pain for my family to take root in Canada.”
“Jewish populations in these regions were ethnically cleansed – an exodus of nearly one million people violently uprooted from the lands where they had lived for 2,500 years,” said Sylvain Abitbol, Co-President, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. “The Museum’s controversial exhibit omits this lived experience entirely. This erasure must not stand.”
Additional reading material:
- Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC)
- JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
- Sephardi Voices – A digital oral-history archive preserving the life stories of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East
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