"To be clear, the Nakba is not contested. The Nakba refers to the displacement and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes by Zionist paramilitary groups that began well before 1948, and continues to this day."
I am writing to you on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to raise concern over your article titled “Canadian museums are becoming platforms of hatred,” published on September 7, 2026.
I take issue with this section of the article:
“Activism above all else I have argued elsewhere that the arts and culture fields have been hijacked by activist curators untethered from the truth but free to espouse whatever politically partisan views they wish. But nowhere is this clearer than in the one-sided and biased Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR), where I up until recently sat on the board, before leaving in protest. The exhibit purports to tell stories of Palestinians displaced in Israel in 1948 and present-day Gaza.”
I also take issue with this section:
“The Nakba exhibit missed an opportunity to educate its visitors by telling the full and historically accurate examination of these contested episodes (especially one that is unfolding in real time).”
To be clear, the Nakba is not contested. The Nakba refers to the displacement and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes by Zionist paramilitary groups that began well before 1948, and continues to this day. This is an odd form of erasure that undermines the entire point of the exhibit and adopts the preferred perspective of the article's writer Mark L. Berlin. As such, the sentence merits a correction clarifying that the Nakba refers to a larger period of ethnic cleansing and is used widely by historians, not just Palestinians.I recommend your team take a look at this fact sheet produced by the Institute for Middle East Understanding for reference on the Nakba, not only for this article, but for future stories covering the Palestine beat.
I appreciate the Hub’s attempt at providing nuanced commentary on the exhibit, but commentary on the Nakba needs to be based in facts, not in a historical narrative that fits the perspective of the columnist. I await your response,Media Analyst
