Winnipeg Museum Exhibit Rekindles Debate Over Canada’s Record On Antisemitism And Historical Narratives

WINNIPEG – When a government official was asked, back in the mid-20^th century, how many Jews would be allowed to immigrate to Canada, the response was, “None is too many.” F.C. Blair, in charge of Canadian immigration policies during the war, is reputedly the source of the sarcasm; others said it could well have been uttered by a number of Canadian officials. Perhaps it was.

Either way, the phrase became the title of a 1983 book written by Irving Abella and Harold Troper: None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933 – 1948, which explores, “… the prevalent and rampant antisemitism of the times, which saw far fewer Jewish immigrants and refugees admitted than other Europeans,” while thousands of Nazis were admitted into Canada.

And so, when politicians say that hate has no place in Canada, responding to the antisemitism regularly marching in Canadian streets, universities, schools, and neighborhoods, they are, at best, misinformed. The historical record shows that antisemitism does indeed have its place in Canada, beginning with the very government we would task to counter it.

Flip the calendar fifty years forward from the publishing of Abella’s seminal book, and we might think that multiculturalism had smoothed over such comments and hatred by past elites. Unfortunately, if anything, the age of multiculturalism has provided a different brand of hatred, with new groups of immigrants often bringing with them their old-world hatred, determined to plant it in the rich Canadian soil where it might root and thrive.

It wasn’t all Jewish hatred, either. I once walked out of a local camera store owned by people from an Eastern European country embroiled in a war with its neighbor, about five minutes before a bomb reduced it to rubble. This same type of multicultural immigration has clearly played an immense role in the Canadian world of increased Jewish hatred. “Globalize the intifada” means exactly what it says, with intifada migration coming to Canada long before the phrase became widely known.

In 2002, proud of living in a great country like Canada, my family visited our nation’s capital. Our to-do list included an outing to the Canadian Museum of Civilization, since renamed, the Canadian Museum of History. It was a wonderful place, entertaining and educational, one that Canada could be proud of. That lasted until we walked into a second-floor exhibit titled, The Lands Within Me: Expressions by Canadian Artists of Arab Origin, which ran from Oct 2001 to March 2003 and was positively covered by Ottawa newspapers.

The exhibit had a 1970s feel to it, with black and white photographs, low-level aerial landscape footage, movie projection, and the use of symbolic objects such as keys to the lost homes of Arabs due to the Israeli Jews who took away their lands. This was long before academics created the concepts of “colonization” and “settlers” to denigrate Western society, and before organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine cleverly applied them to Israel. The terms Nakba and right of return already existed, but at least to my recollection, they were not widely used at the time.

One effective part of the exhibit focused on a kind, saintly-looking Arab elder dressed in robes, holding the key to his lost home and crying. It tugged at the heartstrings. If sympathy reached out to this man, then anger traveled alongside it, directed at whomever so cruelly took away his home and caused him such grief, that being the Jews, as far as this exhibit was concerned. It was a brilliant display, conceived by combining art and narrative, in what we have come to call, uncritically, “my truth.”

Exiting the display, visitors were encouraged to stop at a small booth where they wrote and posted notes on a table set up for that purpose. Since visitors experienced at a visceral level that these poor souls were the victims of Israel and Jews illegally taking their lands and forcibly removing 750,000 of them, the notes expressed sympathy for the Arab plight, as was clearly intended. Ottawa allowed a one-sided, ahistorical narrative to dominate, contributing to a carefully nourished, antisemitic culture.

Fast-forward another quarter century, and the Ottawa exhibit is set to appear at yet another Canadian museum. Beginning in June 2026, Winnipeg’s Museum for Human Rights will host the revival, titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present.

AI research based on the museum’s published text yields the following:

Palestinians use the word al‐Nakba — Arabic for “the catastrophe” — to describe their forced displacement in 1948. At least 750,000 people were expelled by militias and the Israeli military, or fled as the conflicts grew. Most of those who were displaced believed they would return in a few days or weeks. Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.

Apparently, that is the entire explanation provided by the museum as to why these Arabs were displaced in 1948.

There is no historical context, only that “the conflicts grew.” Nothing about five Arab countries invading Israel the day after it declared itself a nation, doing so with their combined armies and intent on destroying the tiny nation and its Jews within two weeks. Nothing explains that the Jewish population was fighting for its survival. Nothing about the sad fact that people are dislocated in wartime, if they are lucky enough to live. Nothing about the Arab armies telling these farmers to evacuate, saying that in two weeks the war would be victoriously over and they could safely return, and certainly nothing about UNWRA setting up permanent “camps” to hold these people hostage as future political weapons instead of allowing them to rebuild their lives as is the case anywhere else. If there are human rights abuses, many belong to the Arabs themselves, but that will not be on display this summer in Winnipeg.

The museum acknowledges that the exhibit “is not a historical retrospective and is not intended to explain the causes of the war.” Of course it isn’t, because that would negate what it is intended to be: an extremely one-sided narrative intended to portray these Arab Palestinians as victims of human rights abuses, and then locate the blame for their suffering in Israel and Jews.

Visitors to Winnipeg will also not read that the surrounding Arab countries like Iraq and Syria expelled approximately 800,000 Jewish families in retaliation, people who had lived there for hundreds of years and who considered themselves to be Syrian and Iraqi. They, too, were unable to take their possessions, not even a large, old-fashioned house key. Many went to Israel, where they began new lives, not confined to camps; some of those survivors eventually made their way to Canada.

Perhaps the government might like to record its history for a future exhibit? To the best of my knowledge, no Canadian government has ever mounted or sponsored an exhibition presenting the human rights impact and narrative of Jewish people who were attacked by five Arab countries with the stated aim of destroying them, first in 1948, and then in the wars of 1956, 67, 73, and October 7, 2023.

Instead, you can tune in to several CBC shows that continuously feature guests who drive the Palestinian discourse and its hatred of Jews, including Canadian Jewish citizens. This is the CBC, the official Canadian broadcasting company, which is enabled to do so every day with its generous funding by the federal government. No room for hate in Canada? There’s always some extra room for it at the CBC…

It is almost unfathomable that our Canadian governments are not just passive observers but active participants in the hatred and antisemitism that threatens not just Jewish citizens, but its own institutions, its churches, and burns its Canadian flag. Apparently, there is a great deal of room for hatred and for antisemitism in Canada. If politicians not only won’t fix it but actively promote it, then what?