Dear Friend in Palestine (responding to the letter to Canada – click here):

Yes, so sadly and unjustly, what you have heard about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) (click here) is true. At this time, there is no plan to include the stories of 65 years of oppression, dispossession, occupation, and human rights violations against the Palestinian people in The West Bank or Gaza.

But do not think that this has gone unnoticed. In Winnipeg, groups of people from the student movement, from the Palestinian Diaspora, from the Independent Jewish Voices (click here), and even from the United Network for a Just Peace in Palestine and Israel (click here) are joining together to strategize how to address this with the board of the CMHR. Many of us feel deeply that the story of ‘Never Again’, the lessons of the Holocaust, must move all of humanity to say ‘Never Again’ to genocide, cultural genocide, and the slow death of a people’s aspirations for statehood, justice, peace and self-determination.

So do not despair that the state of the decision today is how it will be tomorrow! We are working from an inter-religious, inter-cultural, ecumenical, social-justice orientation to ensure that the Palestinian story will be told, and that the story will represent the real voices of Palestine as they recount their history. Keep asking!

And don’t just ask us as Canadians. Ask the Museum board, the Provincial and Federal Governments, and other churches and social-justice bodies to turn their eyes and questions toward Winnipeg. The land the museum sits on is land of the original treaty peoples of Turtle Island. They know about dispossession, and oppression.
Faithfully and in hope!
Dianne at http://shalompaxsalaam.wordpress.com