Our history must not be erased
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is about to launch a controversial exhibit: “Palestine Uprooted: The Nakba Past and Present.”
Museums should be anchored in history, not politics – especially as extremists exploit the conflict to attack our community and our Canadian way of life.
Unfortunately, this exhibit has lacked proper consultation, advances an activist political agenda and excludes the lived experiences of almost a million Jews displaced from their homes.
In so doing, it betrays CMHR’s own professional responsibilities and mandate as a national, publicly funded museum.
Tell the Museum’s CEO: don’t play politics with history.
More information
Often forgotten, the history of the period must also include Jewish communities across Israel, the Middle East and North Africa that were violently displaced and forced out, ending millennia-old diasporas. Here are few historical examples:
Forced Jewish Displacement Inside the Land of Israel
This period saw 70,000 internally displaced Jews, estimated by Historian Benny Morris. Major depopulated Jewish areas included:
- Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem
- Gush Etzion bloc (Kfar Etzion, Masuot Yitzhak, Ein Tzurim, Revadim)
- Atarot and Neve Yaakov (north of Jerusalem)
- Kalia and Beit HaArava (Dead Sea area)
- Kfar Darom (southern Gaza)
Siege and Expulsion from the Jewish Quarter (Jerusalem)
- The Arab Legion besieged Jewish Jerusalem aiming to cut off the city’s 100,000 Jewish residents, who were under intense artillery fire.
- Synagogues, homes, and Jewish institutions were destroyed or desecrated.
- Every Jewish resident was expelled, and captured fighters were taken as POWs to Jordan.
Jewish Exodus from the Middle East & North Africa (MENA)
- This period led to state-backed persecution and public hostility against Jews in Middle Eastern and North African countries.
- Jews faced harsh new laws, loss of citizenship, property seizures, pogroms, arrests, and intimidation.
- 800,000–1,000,000 Jews fled or were forced out of Middle Eastern and North African lands
- Ancient communities in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Egypt were effectively extinguished.
For more information:
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
Jimena: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
Sephardi Voices, a digital archive that preserves the life stories of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East