Local News
Reaction to the valedictory address at the medical school convocation ceremony
Ed. note: We have received a number of inquiries, both from students in this year’s graduating U of M medical school class, and from former students (now practising physicians), asking whether we would print responses to what occurred during the convocation ceremony on May 16. In addition to their being published here, they will also be published in the June 5 issue of The Jewish Post.
We will continue to print whatever responses we receive as (and if) we receive them. In the meantime, here’ are the first two responses we received, on May 23:
May 23rd, 2024
Hello,
My name is Gregory Jackson. I am a member of the 2024 graduating class from the
Max Rady College of Medicine.
Our convocation has garnered more publicity than I would have ever thought. The
valedictorian’s address and subsequent aftermath compels me to act beyond my
traditional comfort zone.
A classmate of mine, Dr. Irvine, stated in an interview with the CBC that “from my
perspective, there wasn’t any students that were graduating that were upset with what was
being said”. I happened to be seated beside Dr. Irvine during convocation. Since Thursday, I
have been truly shocked, disheartened and embarrassed by what unfolded and its impacts
on our community. I regret not walking out during the valedictorian’s speech.
Boisterous cheers from emboldened supporters drown out the gasps and stunned
silence during the valedictorian’s address, turning a day that should have been shared joy
into a day of shared embarrassment. While I know that I cannot convince my classmates
on our disagreements in geopolitics, I am dismayed that our convocation was hijacked to
espouse reckless personal and aggressive political views.
I am writing this letter to show support and patience for the Dean, Dr. Nickerson, as
he navigates an appropriate and firm response. Furthermore, I am writing to formally
dissent and dispute the notion that the Class of 2024 is unified when sophistry
masquerades as advocacy. In the current climate of fear and violence, I respect those who
wish to remain anonymous to maintain their safety. Most importantly, I wish to vocalize my
support to my classmates, faculty members, and people living in our community who are
threatened and alienated by such rhetoric; I hope that our community can heal and that we
can re-aYirm an environment in which our Jewish members are safe, respected and loved.
Faithfully yours,
Gregory Jackson
Dr. Peter Nickerson, Dean and Vice-provost, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences
Michael Benarroch, President, University of Manitoba president@umanitoba.ca
Mr. Ernest Rady, 3420 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 100, San Diego, California, 92121
CBC News, talkback@cbc.ca
Joe Hutchison at Dailymail.com
Roberta Lexier, Associate Professor, Mount Royal University rlexier@mtroyal.ca
Winnipeg Free Press
letters@freepress.mb.ca
I recall vividly that early morning September 1985 when I sat in my first class of Medical School at the University of Manitoba. The very first words spoken by the professor were ‘Primum non nocere’, which means ‘first do no harm’.
As physicians, we must use every means possible to gather an accurate history, using listening skills in a nonjudgmental fashion, and more often than not, creatively gathering collateral history from many sources. Dr. Gem Newman, to his credit, seems to be a passionate individual who cares about people. Unfortunately, the last few minutes of his speech made it clear that he cares only for some, on the basis of an incorrect history, leading to a disastrously incorrect diagnosis. He failed to take his own advice with respect to acknowledging one’s limitations rather than questioning if his opinion reflects fact. Nor does it seem that he consulted with those with more knowledge of the situation. His valedictorian address last week has caused harm: To the Jewish graduates, their families, as well as the Jewish community in the audience and abroad. To those who choose to believe the distortions of reality pertaining to the history of the region and current conflict. To those of us who know differently. To the truth.
Sadly, the response by the University and the media did not address specifically why Newman’s speech was so offensive. For that reason I feel compelled to provide the counter arguments, even if the damage has been done by the hundreds of thousands of views of his speech. After all, he’s a doctor. He should know what he’s talking about. Right?
Newman stated: “ I call on you to stand in solidarity with Indigenous people everywhere.” He either does not know or chooses to ignore the undeniable fact that the Jewish people are indigenous to that region of the Middle East for over 3700 years. He insinuated that the Jews are settler-colonizers, ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. Let me be perfectly clear. There have always been Jews living in that area since Abraham moved his family from Mesopotamia. Over the centuries the population had diminished due to invasions of the land resulting in massacres and exile. However, some always remained. Biblical reference, Jewish writings throughout the ages, numerous archaeological findings and even the Qu’ ran support the historical claim of the land of the ‘Israelites’, meaning the Jewish people. Never mind the fact that the term ‘Jew’ comes from ‘Judea’, just as ‘Arab’ from ‘Arabia’. His remark echoes the libelous accusation that the Jewish people are recent ‘colonizers’ who took over land belonging to others.
Prior to control by the British after WWI, the Ottoman Empire had conquered what is now Israel in the 1500’s. By the mid 1800’s the land was desolate and sparsely populated, as numerous published reports of the time have documented. I will provide two examples: In 1881, English cartographer Arthur Penrhyn Stanley wrote: “In Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there was no appearance of life or habitation.” Mark Twain, in the mid 1800’s, wrote that one could walk from one end of Jerusalem to the other in an hour, At this time Jewish people and organizations started buying back the land from absentee Arab landlords at significantly inflated prices. By 1864, the majority population of Jerusalem, where our first and second temples were built dating back over 3,000 years, was Jewish. Following return of the Jews, with the economic, industrial and technological advances brought with them, Arabs began immigrating to the area as well. THAT is how the population increased; both Jews and Arabs began to repopulate the land. Again, written references from that era along with deeds to the land purchased by individuals and the JNF confirm this.
In 1948, the day after Sovereignty was granted to Israel, five Arab armies invaded Israel with the intent to exterminate all of the Jews and take over the new State. Arabs living there fled of their own volition or left by order of the Arab armies, with assurance that they could return to their homes after the Jews were gone. Lo and behold, Israel won the war against all odds. The 156,000 Arabs that remained became Israeli citizens, whose descendants are now 2 million, with equal rights as the Jews, Christians, Druze and every other citizen. Meanwhile 850,000 Jews were killed or forced to flee from many Arab countries across the Middle East, leaving their property and belongings behind.
Newman also claims that Israel is waging a genocidal war against Palestinians. The only genocidal attack was perpetrated by Hamas and associated Palestinian terror groups on October 7, 2023. I am not making a false claim. Ghazi Hamad in an interview October 23, 2023, as well as other Hamas leaders have been very clear about their intentions to ‘repeat October 7 again and again and again’. I have collected many interviews and videos from across the globe with calls to Islamist extremists to kill every Jew they encounter, as a religious duty. These calls for ‘Jihad’ and ‘Intifada’ coming from extremist Muslim religious leaders has now spread across the globe, and is even chanted by those who don’t know which River to Sea they want to clear the Jewish people from. Despite these threats of global annihilation of the Jewish people, Israel has sent out 7 million leaflets in Arabic with maps of safe zones, supplementing this with millions of phone calls, text messages and voice mails. The IDF ‘roof knocks’, which is sending a dud bomb as a warning to evacuate the area. Unfortunately, Hamas and UNRWA not only told civilians to ignore these warnings, they stole car keys and even shot civilians trying to leave for safe areas as reported by Palestinians and captured on voice recordings and video. No other military past or present goes to the lengths that Israel does to minimize civilian casualties.
This war is being fought in an unprecedented extremely complex war zone intentionally designed as such over the past 18 years. There are over 700 km of tunnels exclusively for Hamas’ use and protection. These terrorists fight in civilian clothes from hospitals, mosques, schools and civilian infrastructure, all of which lose protective immunity by law if used for such purposes. The referenced doctors, health care workers and journalists Newman insists Israel targets are not all altruistic innocents; many including hospital directors captured are longstanding members of Hamas. Rather than protecting their citizens, Hamas fight from beneath, beside and behind their men, women and children. The billions of dollars in aid funneled into Palestine over the years did not get spent on one single civilian bomb shelter. Despite this, Israel has still managed to achieve the lowest civilian:combatant death toll of ANY urban war hovering at about 1:1. This is even using the original Gaza MoH numbers prior to the exposure of manipulation of data at best, fabrication more likely, which led to the U.N. quietly backtracking and halving the number of women and children casualties. For seven months, those numbers had been broadcast to every news outlet and media source with impunity, and are still being quoted to this day. Not only are the numbers provided by Hamas grossly inflated, there are several analyses of the casualty data churned out by those terrorists that prove the patterns are statistically impossible.
You may also wish to verify the way the IDF conducts military operations with the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies of West Point, Major John W. Spencer.
Another resource is Colonel Richard Kemp of the British Army. Their opinions regarding whether a genocide is being waged on the Palestinians carry significantly more weight than Dr. Newman’s, I would think. The IDF is not called the ‘most moral army in the world’ for nothing.
On to the ‘famine” in Gaza. As of this writing, Israel has allowed entry of 427,981 tons of food, 59,930 tons of shelter equipment, 541 tanks of cooking gas, 23,260 tons of medical supplies, 34,940 tons of water. COGAT provides daily updates on humanitarian aid that has crossed into Gaza. Plenty of video evidence is available of Hamas confiscating the aid, shooting and killing civilians trying to get aid, and charging up to ten times the value of the aid (intended as donations, not to sell) which many cannot afford. There are estimates that Hamas has made close to $500,000 profit from this despicable abuse. The pier that the US provided has been targeted by Hamas rockets during and after construction. Videos are also posted daily of bustling markets full of produce in Gaza.
Apart from the poor taste the valedictorian displayed by using the last few minutes of his speech to grandstand, the greatest issue I have is that his claims do not contain fact. This is exactly the way the blood libels began, were spread, and continue to be spread. We witnessed the result of this less than a century ago and vowed ‘never again’. Yet here we are on our way to repeating history that apparently was not learned, with the help of people like Dr. Newman. We lost over 1/3 of the world Jewish population in the Holocaust, and 85 years later our census is still lower than it was in 1939; a mere 16 million, whose voice cannot come close to the volume of our adversaries.
I agree with free speech, but there must be accountability. There must be truth.
Annilea Gunn, MD, CCFP, FCFP
University of Manitoba Class of 1989
Local News
Nakba exhbit at CMHR to open June 27 – Here’s a preview:
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted June 26)The following press release was sent to me early Friday morning June 26 (Photos supplied by Annie Kierans, CMHR) Nothing that follows has been edited. I leave it to you to form your own opinion:
Winnipeg, MB — June 26, 2026 — The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) will open a new exhibit tomorrow that explores human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinian Canadians.
Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present will be on display in the Rights Today gallery on Level 5 until 2028. Featuring personal stories told through artifacts and video testimonies, the exhibit presents Palestinian Canadians reflecting on their ongoing struggle for human rights. The small exhibit reveals enduring patterns of loss and resilience, helping visitors understand more about this contemporary human rights story.
Palestinian Canadian stories are now included alongside many other stories of forced displacement and human rights violations featured in the Museum’s galleries. Each of these stories contribute to our visitors understanding of human rights and help the Museum fulfill its mandate to foster reflection and dialogue.
Exhibition highlights
Personal stories and artifacts: Experience firsthand accounts from Palestinian Canadians sharing their journeys of displacement and memory through a series of five artifacts. Cases display artifacts like property deeds, house keys, and a traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, accompanied by short videos that deepen understanding of the impacts of displacement.
Powerful artworks: In her painting Bound Together in Gaza, Malak Mattar, a Gazan artist, captures the struggles and resilience of her generation shaped by conflict. Her work pays homage to Guernica, Picasso’s powerful masterpiece depicting civilian suffering during war.
Curfews and Closures, by Rajie Cook, bears witness to life under military occupation during the 2000–2005 Palestinian uprising, when curfews and closures were expanded and further limited basic rights and freedoms.
Cultural heritage: Discover traditional Palestinian embroidery called tatreez. Tatreez motifs and colours are tied to place, family history and regional identity. Patterns are associated with particular towns, villages or areas of Palestine. In this way, tatreez is a form of storytelling: a way of preserving memory, sustaining identity and expressing resilience across displacement and exile.
Poetry and reflection: Engage with Mahmoud Darwish’s evocative verses, inspiring personal reflection on exile, voice, and responsibility. Visitors can take a card containing Darwish’s poem and add a personal note, fostering ongoing dialogue beyond the exhibit.
Contemporary context: Witness striking images of current events in Gaza and the West Bank, connecting past displacement to ongoing struggles.
Quotes:
“No force can silence the truth we carry. Growing up in Canada, my children lived the Nakba through our stories. And now we watch it happen again, live, on our phones. When I see the images coming out of Gaza, I am not watching the news. I am watching my history repeat itself.” -Fouad Sahyoun, a Palestinian Canadian featured in the exhibit
“We developed this exhibit with a clear awareness that Palestinian Canadian voices have too often been marginalized, silenced or spoken over — and that anti-Palestinian racism affects whose stories are heard and whose suffering is recognized. That is why we intentionally centred Palestinian Canadian voices throughout the exhibit.” -Isabelle Masson, Curator of Palestine Uprooted
“Human rights matter precisely when they are inconvenient, when the question of who deserves the dignity of having their rights recognized is genuinely contested. These are the moments where having a national museum for human rights is most important.
There are people who believe this exhibit should not exist in its current form. There are people who believe it should have existed sooner. There are people who will visit this exhibit and feel that it does not say enough, and others who will feel it says too much.
We have listened to every one of these voices. We have reflected. And we have renewed our resolve to continue the difficult, sometimes contested, and often controversial work of building understanding about human rights. We are a museum grounded in Canada’s human rights framework, whose mandate requires us to bear witness to the full complexity of the human story. We are proud to open this exhibit because the story it tells will help achieve that mandate, and because this story belongs in the collective memory of Canadians.”
- – Isha Khan, CEO
Local News
Nakba exhibit at human rights museum set to open despite mounting criticism
By NOAH STRAUSS (posted June 25) The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Nakba exhibit is scheduled to open this Saturday, June 27, despite growing criticism and calls for it to be delayed or revised. The exhibit has sparked public debate in Winnipeg and beyond regarding how it presents the history surrounding the creation of the State of Israel.
Earlier this week, Mark Berlin resigned from the museum’s board. In his resignation letter, he expressed concern that the exhibit presents a one-sided narrative and does not adequately address the experiences of Jewish communities affected by the events surrounding Israel’s independence.
The Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe,” refers to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1947–1949 conflict that followed the creation of the State of Israel. Critics of the exhibit argue that it focuses primarily on Palestinian displacement without sufficiently acknowledging the broader regional consequences of the period.
Some Jewish advocacy groups also point to the experiences of Jews who left or were expelled from several Arab and Muslim-majority countries in the decades surrounding Israel’s creation. Estimates suggest that between 850,000 and 950,000 Jews left or were displaced from countries including Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen, under a range of circumstances including persecution, expulsion, and confiscation of property.
In his resignation letter, Berlin, a faculty member at McGill University specializing in human rights law, wrote, “Telling the story with a one-sided perspective chosen by the museum serves to deepen division and contributes to further hostility toward Jews in Canada.”
Following his resignation, CIJA President Noah Shack released a statement saying, “The resignation of the museum’s only Jewish board member is a clear indictment of the museum’s handling of the controversial ‘Nakba’ exhibit.”
The exhibit’s VIP opening is expected to include invitations to representatives from all three levels of government. Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham had initially been invited but later declined following discussions with representatives from the Jewish community, including CIJA Manitoba Vice President Gustavo Zentner and Jeff Lieberman, President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg.
Members of Winnipeg’s Jewish community are also planning a peaceful rally outside the museum on Friday at 5 p.m., according to organizers.
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is expected to release a formal statement ahead of the exhibit’s opening.
Local News
Jewish Child and Family Service helped over 1800 families in 2025
By BERNIE BELLAN Jewish Child and Family Service will be entering the 75th year of its existence in 2027.
With a budget over $4,300,000, JCFS is also the largest beneficiary of funding from the Jewish Federation of the 12 Winnipeg Jewish community agencies that are beneficiaries of the Federation. (To see a list of the 12 agencies go to Funding for Beneficiary Agencies.)
Its impact has grown over the years as JCFS has expanded its horizon, continually adding to the many services it provides. During the JCFS’s Annual General Meeting, held in the Seniors’ Lounge of the Asper Campus on Tuesday evening, June 23, the important role that JCFS plays in the lives of so many members of the Jewish community – also a significant number of non-Jews as well, various speakers cited the many ways in which JCFS has continued to have such a huge impact.
With total revenues of $4,325,160 in fiscal year 2025 (which ended March 31, 2026), but slightly fewer expenses, JCFS not only delivered a wide gamut of services, it managed to deliver those services without incurring a deficit in 2025, despite some significant financial challenges.
As outgoing Board Chair Elana Grinshteyn observed, JCFS had to navigate some major reductions in funding, including a cut in funding from the federal government to the tune of $100,000, plus the loss of funding from the Claims Conference, which had provided support for Holocaust survivors.
Yet, despite those setbacks in funding, Grinshtein reported, “Together, we insured that services remained intact.
“We increased access to interest free loans,” she noted, “doubling” the amount that had been allocated in 2024.
And, amidst the ever-increasing demand for services, “JCFS has continued to navigate space limitations,” Grinshteyn noted. (I should note that as far back as 2019 I reported in an interview I had conducted with JCFS CEO Al Benarroch about the JCFS’s dire need for more space. Here is an excerpt from what Benarroch had to say about the JCFS’s need for more room back in 2019: “…we’ve been looking for roughly 3,000 more square feet of space. We have a footprint right now of roughly 5,000 square feet for over 40 staff. We’ve given up a board room here. It’s been taken over by older adult service staff. We have a conference room which is adjacent to the board room; we’ve moved two staff in there.
“Yesterday I gave up my office for the entire morning so that staff could interview clients.
“We need to relieve the pressure we’re facing right now – yet alone plan for expanding and growing.
“Whatever space we’d be looking at would be temporary. It’s now 22 years that we’ve been in this facility. The campus has taken over squash courts, it’s taken over a museum – internally, to accommodate the growth in services. Maybe it’s time now to look at growing outside this building…”
As the saying goes: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (That’s me, trying to impress.)
While I tried to take notes during Al Benarroch’s CEO report, I realized following his remarks that there was so much important information conveyed, also a slew of statistics, that it might be more helpful to reprint a good portion of what he said verbatim, so I asked Al to send me a copy of his remarks. (That’s one of the nice things about writing on a website. There’s an infinite amount of room to print the kind of stuff that nerds like me pretend to read.)
During his CEO’s report, Benarroch enumerated the many challenges JCFS encountered in 2025.
Among those challenges, Benarroch noted, were:
• The rising and high cost of living
• Food insecurity
• Housing issues
• Our aging population demographics
• The complex needs of our newcomer families
• The increasingly complex needs in mental health & youth mental health
Yet, despite all those challenges, Benarroch said, “As always… we rose to meet those head on, and with the support of our community.”
In particular, Benarroch cited the support of the Jewish Federation, which contributed $948,800 to JCFS in 2025. (The largest portion of JCFS funding, by the way came from the Province: over $1,100,000.)
Fundraising also played a significant role in contributing to JCFS revenues, with almost $700,000 raised through that route, including direct donations of over $320,000 and bequests over $40,000.
As Benarroch noted, “Every year, we look forward with hope that it will be a quiet year.
“Well, if that’s the case, we are in the wrong business.
“We happen to be in the reflect, respond and pivot business.
“This is the nature of the human existence.”
Benarroch went on to add some more statistics about how JCFS played such a pivotal role in the lives of so many people. In 2025 JCFS:
• Served 1,800 client households – impacting almost 5,000 people.
• Assisted 15 foster children.
• Served 70 families in Child Welfare….
“But what is even more important is that we assisted 90 children that remained at home with their families,” Benarroch said.
The year 2025 also saw the inauguration of what is known as the “Asper Empowerment Program”, through which:
• 311 clients were assisted (including Passover Assistance)
• $80,000 was disbursed in financial assistance
• Over $20,000 was given out in interest-free loans.
• 6,500 kg of food were disbursed
In the area of mental health and counselling services, Benarroch noted that JCFS:
• Supported over 50 adults with mental health challenges
• Our Friday Mental Health Wellness Group participants took part in 22 group activities or outings
• We support some 20 individuals and families impacted by addictions through individual and group services.
• We delivered almost 1,100 counselling sessions, over half of which were subsidized on our sliding scale.
• We continued to support individuals, families, and partner Jewish organizations with the ongoing emotional impacts of the war in Israel and high levels of global antisemitism.
In the area of support for older adults, JCFS served over 250 seniors including:
• 70 newcomer seniors
• 50 seniors living with mental health differences
• 65 Holocaust Survivors (including celebrating “25 years of our Holocaust Survivor Drop-in Group, a partnership with the Gwen Secter Creative Living Centre.”)
In the area of settlement services, JCFS:
• Welcomed almost 80 new families
• Almost 50 families from Israel, seeking reprieve from the ongoing stresses and pressures of the war.
Benarroch noted that “These families are dealing with the deep trauma of displacement, having lived under constant stress, fear and the ensuing post-traumatic impact, family and parenting challenges as a result, emotional exhaustion, financial strain, and more.
“Thanks to the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, we hired a trained specialized support worker, with a background in therapy, to help these families cope, adjust, and receive much needed emotional supports.”
Benarroch went on to describe many more initiatives in which JCFS was engaged in 2025, but I want to return to the retirement of Elena Grinshteyn from the Board of JCFS after nine years serving on the Board, including the last two as Chair. Grinshteyn will be succeed by Bradley Abells, who has been on the Board since 2021. In his remarks, Abells noted that he is an actuary at Canada Life and that he first joined the Board when his particular expertise as an actuary proved extremely helpful in helping to solve a problem that had arisen, and he found the experience so rewarding he decided to remain on the Board ever since .
Also on the Board is Michael Schacter, who is returning as Treasurer and who looks the way you’d expect a finance guy to look.
