Antisemitism Exhibit Scrapped at Seattle Museum After Employees Walked Out to Protest Israel
The walkout proves why the museum needs to show the exhibit!
Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum canceled an exhibit about antisemitism and hate after employees walked out to protest Israel.
Well, it is hard to promote an exhibit about hate when you hate people:
In May, over 2 dozen employees at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle walked off the job following the opening of the museum’s “Confronting Hate Together,” about racism faced by the Asian, black, and Jewish communities. The boycott focused on a panel in the exhibit which showed a local synagogue after it had been vandalized by anti-Israel activists. The panel read, “Today, antisemitism is often disguised as anti-Zionism.” Employees objected to the panel and walked off the job, shuttering the museum for weeks.
According to a statement from the Washington State Jewish Historical Society (WSJHS), “It is with great disappointment, pain, and sadness we share that, due to circumstances out of our control, the Confronting Hate Together (CHT) Exhibit will not be presented jointly to the community in a public venue by the Black Heritage Society (BHS), Washington State Jewish Historical Society (WSJHS) and the Wing Luke Museum (WLM).”
The museum tried to justify shutting it down but couldn’t they get volunteers? The statement alone shows the importance of having the exhibit:
Throughout this process, the WSJHS has been open and responsive to feedback from partners, sensitive to the international climate and challenges, and we have leaned into honesty and transparency. We worked tirelessly for months to prepare for the CHT exhibit. Furthermore, since the initial launch on May 21st, we made adjustments and modifications to help people better understand the exhibit by clarifying language regarding the exhibition’s intent to focus on confronting hate locally by three historically redlined communities.
Immense harm has been caused to the Jewish community by not being able to show the exhibit. The anti-Jewish ideas and attitudes that fueled the WLM employee walkout (whether conscious or not) have yet to be adequately acknowledged. And, at the same time, the greater Seattle community will be deprived of an important cross-cultural educational opportunity.
Antisemitism today is at its highest levels in over 40 years, and more allyship is needed to help meet the moment. We need partners who are stakeholders in the safety and well-being of the Jewish people and who stand with us even when it gets hard. Ironically, in an exhibit that was supposed to be about coming together to confront hate, hate has won. And, our community feels more alone as a result.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat equated the cancelation to book banning: “So we basically just book-banned a cultural exhibit. It also doesn’t seem like anyone’s really objecting to it.”
Even Democratic State Senato Jesse Salmon criticized the museum: “It is becoming increasingly politically challenging in this area to express ideas outside of a narrow bandwidth without unreasonable blowback.”
The employees protested one panel in the exhibit:
The boycott focused on a panel in the exhibit which showed the Herzl Ner Tamid Synagogue on Mercer Island after it had been vandalized by anti-Israel activists which read, “Today, antisemitism is often disguised as anti-Zionism.” The panel stated that the phrase that was spray painted on the synagogue, “Stop the killing,” was in spirit to the idea that “the Jews of Mercer Island could control the actions of the Israeli government.”
The panel continued, “On university campuses, pro-Palestinian groups have voiced support for Hamas (which is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government) and a Palestinian state stretching ‘from the river to the sea,’ a phrase defined by the erasure of Israel.”
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Comments
That WAS the exhibit. Done as “performance art”.
Hard to beat that for getting the message across.
“Antisemitism: employees walked out to protest Israel.”
So, it was performance art.
Generalize. Do one for anti-white.
See my reply to DSHornet, which was intended for your idiotic remarks.
I’m not sure a better example of irony could be found. And the point will be completely lost on the Jew hating community.
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Anti-Semitism exhibit scrapped due to anti-Semitism.
The point will also be completely lost on the Jewish community. The majority will continue to vote for the people that support this.
What does anti-White have to do with anti-Jewish? In the minds of traditional anti-Semites, we’re just enemies of the white race, pretending to be white. In the eyes of Jew-haters on the left, we all enjoy ultra-white privilege, even those of us who are not white (if they even acknowledge the existence of non-White Jews).
That’s because anti-Jewish hate isn’t hate-hate. Like anti-white hate isn’t hate-hate.
Because if those were real “hate” then you couldn’t blow up civilization and usher in the global communist order.
“Stand against hate!”
*points*
“Oh no, not THAT hate!”
Had the museum simply fired the “protestors” as was appropriate, this would not have been a repeating issue.
Clearly management was in sympathy enough with the pro-terrorists
(“no, we don’t hate Jews… except for Jews that support Israel, or even don’t support Israel but are still Jews”)
that shitcanning all of them and hiring new people or getting volunteers from the local Jewish community was never even considered.
Quite likely, since Seattle and its burbs are vile progressive swamps, that museum management didn’t actually want to put on ANY exhibits that promoted tolerance to Jews, but simultaneously didn’t want to appear overtly anti-Semitic. This walk-out gave them a transparent reason to submit to the haters.
Exactly. And if the museum hired new workers to replace them, it wouldn’t have to worry about a lack of volunteers. The museum’s inaction is tantamount to acquiescence.
Bingo! Having lived in Seattle at one time, I found that most of the folks are cool but there is an element of nuttyness found around the universities and other “educational” institutions. Got some thing to do with the weather being gloomy a lot.
Wing Luke Museum should immediately fire ringleaders of the walkout.
After firing the ringleaders, reinstate the exhibit. At that point if any balk, fire them.
Over time, say a year or two, everyone who walked out should be replaced.
The panel continued, “On university campuses, pro-Palestinian groups have voiced support for Hamas (which is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government) and a Palestinian state stretching ‘from the river to the sea,’ a phrase defined by the erasure of Israel.”
In other words, the panel told the truth. We can’t have that!
They should have had free Nazi uniforms to hand out to the employees just outside the door.
They probably had keffiyehs. Got to get with the times. And WaPo.
In an exhibit that was supposed to be about coming together to confront hate, haters came together instead.
Simple. Fire them.
Long ago when we were contemplating what to do after I took off my badge for the last time; my family and I noted that we spent a lot of vacation time in the NW. We actually for a time were checking out the real estate markets on the Olympic Peninsula around the town of Port Angeles. Close enough to Seattle [museums and attractions] and both Vancouver [the only classical Chinese formal garden in North America and a huge Chinatown] and Victoria [the oldest Chinatown in North America], B.C. to be easily accessible with just a short ferry ride to each, and yet a small town with mountains and ocean. Family events prevented that, and to be honest I am now grateful that they did.
Our country is no longer unified as a nation under laws made with the consent of the governed, using constitutional means, and operating under a single basic social contract. We are breaking up as a people and as a culture, and in the West Coast states [California, Oregon, and Washington] from about the middle of the E-W axis of each of the states to the coast they are not really the America we grew up in nor do they believe in the Rights of Man covering everybody. I could easily see the Leftist coercive organs of state power in Washington taking it a lot farther than just walking off the job.
This will not be the last or worst of these events.
Subotai Bahadur
I’m a 6th generation Oregonian. I still have relatives scattered over Oregon and Washington. I haven’t been back in years and have zero interest in returning. Too much crazy has ruined the region.
Excellent comment.
we allow the teachers to teach the hate
sure there would be hate no matter but the fact that we allow it to be taught ….
Seattle is becoming a joke. We taught there a few years and couldn’t wait to return to the Heartland. And trust me on this–teachers don’t decide the curriculum. As special ed teachers, WE could, as our kids had IEP’s for each one. But the others….admin..it’s the damn, PC admin that is ruining our schools–
And rapidly getting rid of the pros to make room for newly-graduated kids who are brainwashed and who will do what they’re told. Then they turn THEM against the vets as :bigoted,” etc…..
P.S. May I add: it’s not that they are “allowing” it to be taught. The admin on down, from the city headquarters to the principal and VP of almost every school, they force it on you and happily drive you out if your don’t “cooperate.” Their supposed “teacher training” is always (at least in urban/suburban schools) mandatory and focuses on how to be more PC.
It is better now, teaching in a small town in the Midwest, but still not as good as when we were growing up. W/admin, it’s discipline that’s the biggest deal–it supposedly is racist (in cities) and hurts their little self-esteem, so you can get a bad rep for that alone.
Job abandonment is legal grounds for termination in all 50 states. Why aren’t they terminated?
Exhibition of topics/ideas might lead to reasonable people engaging in discourse and the free exchange of ideas and that might alter some preconceived notions and maybe even change minds. The lefty wokiestas seem hell bent on shutting that opportunity down.
Legal Insurrection posted this with a straight face in the same blog where it reported approvingly that a “forced speech” case involving a middle school teacher is cleared for a jury trial.
So which side of speech is LI on?
Inquiring minds want to know.
The teacher is the one whose speech was forced. They’re on the side of the teacher.
They were trying to abrogate the teacher’s right to free speech.
The anti-semites forced the museum to shut down the exhibit about anti-semites. They to were abrogating the right to free speech.
The ‘sides’ you’re talking about are one side.
I read the article with the usual AMUSEMENT of the LEFT being the LEFT! Their absolute stupidity and hatred of anything other than LEFTISM is astounding! The Board or whoever controls the Museum should do one of two things – reinstate the Exhibit and FIRE anyone who protests or FIRE all those who walked out and RESIGN in SHAME! We KNOW that won’t happen because the LEFT has no shame – they are SOULLESS beings and should be treated with the same contempt that they toss on everyone else! Really though, it’s so COMICAL and so PREDICTABLE that anti-Jewish LEFTISTS would walk off their jobs to protest an EXHIBIT of ANTI-JEWISH activities! LIFE IMITATES ART!!!