Features
Some thoughts on the Nakba exhibit – and on support for Israel
By BERNIE BELLAN Since I wrote my last piece about my interviews with the curator of the Nakba exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Isabelle Masson, and the CEO of the CMHR, Isha Khan, I’ve heard from many different individuals about those interviews.
The general tenor of the comments I heard was that I had conducted fair interviews.
I asked some tough questions, people told me, but I listened to what Isabelle and Isha had to say, and I didn’t conduct the interviews with a pre-conceived agenda either to grill them or to allow them to conduct some kind of public relations exercise that would justify what they had done.
Since then I’ve spoken to so many people – most of whom haven’t actually seen the exhibit, who were either very critical of the notion of even allowing an exhibit with the name “Nakba” in it or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, said the exhibit didn’t go far enough in condemning the Israeli “genocide” in Gaza.
Look – I’m not out to curry favour with anyone. The Jewish Post (of which I used to be publisher) has become much more right wing than I would have liked by containing a disproportionate number of Myron Love pieces. I understand the publisher’s doing that – Myron is a prolific writer and he does cover the waterfront when it comes to reporting on Jewish personalities in Winnipeg. But Myron is as far right wing as one can be – and I always heavily censored him when he veered into fanatical support for Israel which, to his mind, can never do any wrong.
I’ve spent a great deal of time reading about Israel’s history around the time of the creation of the state, also discussing that period with individuals who are very knowledgable about the subject. The key question for me is not whether a great many of the Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 left voluntarily (which, I tend to think, based on what I’ve read, was not the case; the vast majority were expelled.)
Rather, the key question for me is: Could a Jewish state ever have come about if it had a majority Arab population – which would have been the case if 750,000 Palestinians had not left? The answer, I would submit, and as was voiced by many Jewish leaders of the state at the time, is absolutely not.
You might not like to read that – or even to acknowledge that was what was behind the expulsion of the vast majority of Palestinian residents of Israel, but in terms of realpolitik, expelling the majority of Palestinians was a prerequisite to the creation of a Jewish state. I don’t offer an opinion here as to the morality of that. The history of the world is a history of displacement of populations, including right here in Canada, with what happened to the original indigenous inhabitants of what became Canada. I’ll leave that to you, the reader, to judge whether it was necessary to expel 750,000 Palestinians.
Now, where I had difficulty with the Nakba exhibit wasn’t in its telling the story of what happened in 1948. It’s in its recurrent descriptions in such negative terms of what has happened afterward – without once mentioning the violence perpetrated by Palestinians themselves against Israelis, that I thought exposed a clear bias on the part of the exhibit’s organizers.
But, there’s been quite an over reaction within the Jewish community – both here, and elsewhere – such as in the National Post, to that exhibit. Yes, clearly the people who put the Nakba exhibit together had an agenda to excoriate Israel. If you take a look again at my interview with Isabelle Masson, the curator of the exhibit, she spoke in such bafflegab that I don’t think she cared a whit when I questioned her about why the exhibit referred to what even Palestinians termed the “Intifada” as nothing more than an “uprising.”
Isha Khan, in contrast, did give me the impression that she was more concerned about the suggestion that the CMHR had not consulted sufficiently with Jewish groups – and she did attempt to answer that question, but I found her answer disingenuous.
Leaving aside the entire issue of the CMHR exhibit, there is a broader question that most readers of The Jewish Post newspaper are probably not likely to consider and that is the drastic change in attitudes of many Jews toward Israel. (Since I don’t really know who reads this website – and I don’t allow comments because I get inundated with spam comments if I do, I don’t have a clue who is actually looking at this website.)
While readers of the Jewish Post may be prepared to read unsettling opinions – such as what I have just offered about the truth about the creation of the state of Israel – let’s be honest: I’m quite familiar with who the majority of subscribers to that paper are – after having been co-publisher, then publisher, of the paper for over 40 years. The vast majority of readers are older, firmly supportive of Israel – no matter what Israel does, and not particularly interested in reading criticisms of Israel. I don’t think the majority are as extreme in their support for Israel as Myron Love (whose opinion pieces you’re not going to read on this website), but they’re certainly not going to easily accept the notion that the vast majority of Palestinians were expelled from Israel in 1948. No, they’re going to prefer the old argument that leaders of Arab nations told the Arab inhabitants of what was then Palestine to pick up their things and leave because they were going to soon be able to return once the Jews were driven into the sea.
But, how then are readers going to react to a headline like this, which wasn’t printed in an antisemitic newspaper, it came from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Israel, up sharply since 2022, survey shows,” which was published in April this year. And then, there was this headline this week in the “Forward,” America’s leading Jewish publication: “Mamdani more popular than Netanyahu among U.S. Jews, new poll shows.”
There has been a major change in attitudes among American Jews toward Israel. How much Canadian Jews’ attitudes have changed we simply don’t know because there is hardly ever any polling down among Canadian Jews.
But last week there was a piece in the Free Press by Ben Waldman about Jacob Brodovsky, the former co-executive director of BB Camp, who was forced to resign his position after a concerted campaign was mounted by certain elements within the Jewish community to force him out for his supposedly “anti-Zionist” views. In that article Jacob lamented how traumatic that experience was for him – and that it’s led him wanting to remain totally disconnected from the Jewish community here.
As I also noted in a piece that was published on this website – about a recently held community “town hall” (which wasn’t really a town hall at all – it was simply an opportunity for certain leaders of Jewish organizations to brag about how much they’ve done and to lash out at the CMHR for putting on that Nakba exhibit), there are a great many Winnipeg Jews who are also similarly alienated from Winnipeg’s established Jewish community.
No – the vast majority of those people don’t read the Jewish Post (although when I was publisher I did hear from a few individuals from time to time who congratulated me for having the courage to criticize the Jewish establishment here), but I would dare suggest there are a lot more people who feel the way Jacob Brodovsky does than leaders of our established Jewish organizations would like to think – not that it’s going to change their minds by reading what I have to say.
Still, a few of them do honestly seem interested in hearing different opinions -which is why I suggested they hold another town hall but, this time make a deliberate effort to include people like Jacob Brodovsky (who, I doubt, would be interested in coming), or even – heaven forbid, members of organizations like Independent Jewish Voices).
In summing up – is it too much to ask that people, even readers of the Jewish Post, try to have an open mind about things? Also, be aware that attitudes toward Israel have changed drastically in the past couple of years – and it’s not all about antisemitism – it’s about what Israel has done – and is still doing – in Gaza.
Perhaps in a future issue of the Jewish Post, if the publisher allows me, I’ll expand upon why I think antisemitism has risen so sharply – and how “educating” people isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference.
Features
WINNIPEG EMPLOYERS SHOULD USE AI TO TRAIN, NOT JUST TRIM
By Dr. GLEB TSIPURSKY Generative AI has already entered everyday Canadian work. Statistics Canada reported that 35.9% of workers used generative AI in the previous 12 months. For Winnipeg employers, the important question is no longer whether staff will use these tools. The more consequential question is what kind of workforce employers will build while they use them.
An updated Stanford University analysis found employment among workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed peers, with the gap widening over time. That trend should concern Winnipeg employers because the work most exposed to automation often overlaps with the work through which beginners develop professional judgment.
Entry-level employees do more than produce first drafts, conduct basic research, summarize information, prepare routine analyses, or handle standard customer questions. Those tasks are also training. Repetition teaches people what good work looks like, where common mistakes appear, when a situation is routine, and when something unusual requires escalation.
If employers simply remove that work, they may save time today while weakening the pipeline of people capable of handling harder work tomorrow. A firm can automate a junior task quickly. Rebuilding several years of missing experience later is much harder.
The better approach is to redesign entry-level work around AI-assisted apprenticeship. New employees can use AI to produce a first draft, but they should also verify the output against reliable sources. They can use AI to summarize a customer issue, but they should explain which facts matter and what remains uncertain. They can use AI to analyze routine information, but they should flag exceptions and bring consequential decisions to experienced colleagues.
That changes the role of junior employees without eliminating the learning built into the role. Instead of rewarding people for producing routine work manually, employers can reward them for checking AI output, spotting edge cases, asking better questions, and knowing when human judgment is required.
Managers also need to change how they supervise. If a junior employee submits an AI-assisted answer, the manager should ask how the employee verified it, what assumptions the system made, what could go wrong, and what would cause the employee to escalate the issue. Those questions turn AI use into a training process rather than a shortcut around learning.
Winnipeg’s small and mid-sized employers may be especially well positioned to take this approach. They often cannot afford to separate technology adoption, training, and talent development into different departments. The same manager who wants more productivity today also needs capable employees next year. That makes it practical to connect AI use directly to coaching and skill development.
Employers should also resist measuring AI adoption only by time saved or tasks completed. Those metrics matter, but they can hide whether the organization is developing stronger judgment. A more useful set of questions is whether employees are catching more errors, escalating the right exceptions, becoming more independent over time, and learning which decisions should remain human-led.
None of this requires employers to preserve every old task exactly as it was. Some routine work should disappear. The goal should be to preserve the learning function, not the old workflow. If AI removes one form of repetition, employers should deliberately replace it with another way for junior staff to practice, receive feedback, and encounter progressively harder decisions.
Winnipeg businesses can gain real productivity from AI without turning entry-level work into a dead end. The strongest employers will use AI to accelerate the development of beginners rather than treating beginners as the easiest cost to remove. That approach can improve productivity now while still producing the experienced professionals Winnipeg will need in the years ahead.
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Adapted from: The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026). https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/aibook
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, a behavioral scientist called the “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times, helps tech-forward leaders stop overpaying for AI while boosting engagement and innovation. He serves as the CEO of the AI consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, and wrote eight books, including The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026).
Features
IPL 2026/27 Preview: Beer Sheva Defends Its Crown
Israeli football enters the 2026/27 season with a genuinely open title race for the first time in years. Hapoel Beer Sheva claimed a dramatic sixth championship last May, edging Beitar Jerusalem by just three points after a campaign interrupted by regional conflict and settled almost entirely on head-to-head form. That kind of finish leaves scores unsettled, and every major club has spent the summer either reinforcing a title push or plotting revenge. With four Israeli sides now competing in European qualifiers simultaneously, the new Ligat ha’Al campaign carries more weight than it has in years.
How Beer Sheva Won It
Ran Kozuk’s side did not simply outscore the league last season; they won the moments that mattered against the team chasing them hardest. Beitar Jerusalem lost twice to Beersheba across the regular campaign and could only draw both playoff meetings, a pattern one report summed up bluntly: if you want to be champions, you have to beat the champions, and Beitar never managed it. Kings Kangwa was named the league’s most valuable player, while captain Miguel Vitor and goalkeeper Ofir Marciano anchored a squad that closed out the title with a 4-2 win over Maccabi Tel Aviv. Owner Alona Barkat has kept that core together, giving Beersheba a real shot at back-to-back titles, assuming Champions League fixtures don’t wear the squad down.
Beitar’s Response and the Chase Pack
Losing a title race by three points after leading for large stretches tends to force change, and Beitar Jerusalem has responded accordingly. Almog Cohen, previously the club’s sporting director, has stepped into the head coach role, replacing Barak Itzhaki after the campaign ended in disappointment. Captain Yarden Shua, veteran forward Omer Atzili and Dor Hugi remain the attacking core, though the club opens the season without injured midfielder Adi Yona, a blow given how much Beitar leaned on midfield control last year. Maccabi Tel Aviv arrives with a different kind of statement: despite finishing outside the top two domestically, they won the Israel State Cup in a chaotic 2-1 final against Beersheba that produced six red cards, suggesting the squad has quality to challenge again even if consistency remains the question mark.
The Return of European Football on a Bigger Scale
What separates this season from recent ones is the sheer number of Israeli clubs competing for continental places at once. Beersheba enters Champions League qualifying as domestic champions, though for security reasons their ties have been relocated to Szombathely, Hungary rather than played at home. Maccabi Tel Aviv, seeded thanks to a healthy UEFA coefficient, goes into Europa League qualifying against the winner of Sheriff Tiraspol and Aluminij. Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Tel Aviv both enter Conference League qualifying, the latter having secured their spot via a fourth-place playoff finish. Playing qualifiers on neutral ground has become routine for Israeli clubs, and it hasn’t stopped them from competing credibly.
Mid-Table Ambition and the Promotion Effect
Beyond the four clubs chasing European nights, the middle of the table looks unusually competitive heading into August. Hapoel Petah Tikva and Hapoel Tel Aviv both returned to the top flight after a season away, and Hapoel Tel Aviv’s playoff run last term shows promoted clubs can climb quickly rather than simply survive. Maccabi Haifa and Ironi Kiryat Shmona, both capable of springing results against the traditional big three, will look to use a full pre-season to close the gap. That added depth tends to produce the unpredictable midweek results that make a 14-team division worth following from the opening whistle.
What to Watch as the Season Kicks Off
Beersheba’s fixture list is the one to track first, since balancing Champions League qualifying with league form in August and September will say a great deal about whether this squad has the depth to go back-to-back. Beitar’s response under a rookie head coach is the second storyline, particularly whether Cohen can get more out of a group that dominated possession last season but couldn’t finish off the champions when it counted. For fans following these storylines match by match, tracking how the market prices each side into the opening rounds is a useful gauge of who bookmakers actually rate, and anyone comparing options for the season ahead can check out the best betting sites in Canada for a sense of how odds and coverage are shaping up before a ball is kicked.
Between a defending champion carrying continental fixture congestion, a rival reshaping its coaching staff, and a deepening mid-table, Ligat ha’Al enters the new season with more storylines running in parallel than it has had in years. Whether Beer Sheva backs up their sixth title or Beitar finally converts near misses into silverware, the opening weeks should offer the first real clues.
Features
Musings from Dizengoff Street – by Bruce Brown (updated August 14)
(Posted August 18, 2026) And the beat goes on in the strait. A bit quieter lately although may be heating up again with the 60day ‘ceasefire’ officially expired. And while Iran occasionally lashed out over the last two months, they did not attack Israel. How do you spell deterrence. According to my Yiddisha mama, its spelled ‘Pftt. Pftt. Pftt‘.
(August 14, 2026) Despite three years of varying degrees of warfare. Moody’s biannual report of the Israeli economy was quite positive. Basically, the report saw no pressures on Israel’s credit rating. While the macro data remains strong, Israel still faces a complex geopolitical situation further complicated by upcoming elections (we pondered about how crazy that is in an earlier muse). And Israeli’s inflation rate for the first half of 2026 fell to a historic five year low of 1.2% (vs Canada’s 2.6%). As for my own pocketbook. Haven’t had an infamous Israeli bank overdraft in years. So all is fine.
If that’s not enough economic voodoo talk for one musing. According to one famous barometer. Israel moved to second place in the Economist’s Big Mac Index. Introduced in 1986, this tasty indicator compares the purchasing power parity across countries by measuring the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac -which most can relate to- against the benchmark U.S. burger. So while a Big Mac in the U.S. costs $6.22. In Israel it costs $7.67, the second most expensive place to buy the hamburger in the world, Switzerland being the most pricey at a whopping (no reference to Wendy’s) $9.04. While the cheapest Big Mac can be enjoyed in Indonesia at only $2.38. Canada ranked 22nd of the fifty-four countries considered, at $5.85. Parity. Smarity. I’m going for my Big Mac fix. Just after I finish writing this muse….
(August 11, 2026) Bravo Boy George. We certainly will dance again! And what better way than with his new reggae tune. Now Boy George is dealing with a hostile backlash against his just stand for Israel. Having to withdraw from London’s East End production of Jesus Christ Superstar where he was going to play – guess it. King Herod. Never a big Culture Club fan, but I am anyway -as a sign of support- going to download his greatest hits to my Spotify library. And hoping to have a chance to buy a concert ticket should Boy George perform in Israel. Kind of reminds me of Bob Dylan’s 1983 song Neighborhood Bully. Also in defense of Israel. I’m going to download that song as well. Although don’t think he was hounded the way Boy George is now. Sign of the times I guess.
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Coming clean. I sometimes find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little ditty ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Now why can’t we come up with something as catchy. With such an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters. George Gershwin. Irving Berlin. Burt Bacharach. Carole King. Neil Diamond. Leanard Choen. Paul Simon. Gene Simmons, Amy Winehouse. Bob Dylan. And yes, even the Buddhist Boy George. And still… gurnish! No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle
(August 8, 2026) Outside Basimta Café in Central Jerusalem. Love the red shirt against a tiny sea of black. Not sure I am shrugging because of the ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat or the lack of an ultra-orthodox uproar over a Jerusalem café operating on Shabbat. For the last six weeks Israeli headlines shouted about the cafe chaos. With the ultra-religious blocking entrances and storming the café. While shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Upsetting the secular amongst us just wanting to enjoy our Saturday iced matchas. So the wife and I thought we would check it out. And. Yes. Buy something to support the business. Uproar. Not. Blocked entrances. Not. Storming the café. Not. Albeit there were police barriers separating the devout protesters from the coffee drinkers. The protesters being just a few dozen black clad, pious Jews. Mostly teenagers. And yes. Shouting ‘Shabbos! Shabbos!’ Certainly underwhelming in its reported mayhem. Reminds me of the famous saying misattributed to Mark Twain – “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed.” But I did enjoy my iced matcha.
(August 6, 2026) Here we go again. Another round of forever negotiations. As someone who negotiates for a living. The way things are going in the straits. If I had to recommend a book on the subject to a new hire. Between The Art of the Deal, A Presidential Edition by Donald J. Trump or The Real Art of the Deal by the Mullahs of Iran with a special forward by the IRGC. Well. I would choose the latter.
(August 3) Bravo Yoav Segalovitz, Liberal Yesh Atid MK and Monsour Abbas, United Arab Ra’am MK and party head. For breaking a glass ceiling where a Jewish lawmaker joins an Arab political party. No less a political earthquake in my little shtetl. Which can significantly impact coalition block arithmetic and posturing and strategy in the upcoming elections. Now Ra’am can be considered a legitimate ‘Zionist’ partner when forming coalition blocks and potentially pushing the ‘center left/right’ party over the 60 seat majority threshold. In our crazy parliamentary democracy defined by a multi-party (about fourteen!!), proportional representation system. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Israel’s proportional representation model of governance is the best parliamentary democracy system except for all other forms of working democracies. Stay tuned for more amateurish political musings as we move towards Israel’s 26th national election – five of them held since 2019.
(August 1) Although both sides say they are open to diplomacy. Neither really trusts the other. And American military action, or its threat, continues. I read headlines in the middle of the night -it’s a nervous habit lately– that the Dynamic Duo of Trump and Netanyahu may again strike in unison. Possibly this weekend. Yikes! Prompting me, at 2:30 AM, to dash around the house stocking my safe room. Bottled water. Canned food. Medicines. Documents. The beat goes on….
If it’s crazy here. It’s insane in Italy. With a recent online ‘Jew Hunt’ in the Milan area. Before being removed, the digital forms urged reportings of Israelis and Italian Jews staying in local hotels. The infamous Global Sumud Movement -yes, the one coordinating ‘peace and humanitarian’ flotillas to Gaza- was somehow connected. Although they deny involvement?! This deranged decree was looking to identify Zionist tourism and Zionist neo-colonization in Italy. I’ll stick with stocking the saferoom.
Then there’s New York Mayor Mamdani, a Global Sumud Movement supporter, threatening to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if he comes to New York. But since discovered he has no legal right for such a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic antic. Maybe Mandami should be arrested! Or at least impeached. For being a grandstanding, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Western, anti-democratic mayor.
Here’s a post Bruce sent us Friday, July 31:
WARTIME MUSINGS
Should credible threats against FLOTUS and ‘FSOTUS’ (first son..) not be justification to attack first.
As for yesterday’s summit. Netanyahu really can’t win. Explainer. If Trump now attacks without victory its ’cause of Netanyahu. If Trump now attacks with victory its ’cause of Trump. And, in Israel, if Trump doesn’t attack -victory or not- Netanyahu failed in his eighth meeting with Trump. And if Trump does attack -victory or not- half the country will vilify Bibi anyway. Missing a permutation?
Ya. I know. Kinda’ need a definition of victory for that musing to work.
And here in my little shtetle. We go to sleep unsure if there will be a code red in the middle of the night. And if not. We wake up thinking it will be tonight. How do you define stress?
Seemed like an appropriate way to end this musing.
Bruce Brown is a former Winnipegger who made aliyah to Israel over 35 years ago. Bruce first began writing for us – in his own inimitable style, in 2012, during what was known as “Operation Pillar of Defense.” His occasional musings on aspects of life in Israel that were far from what you’d typically read in other reports from Israel were hugely popular – both in the print Jewish Post & News and on this website.
We’re now glad to report that Bruce is back writing for us – this time on a regular basis. We will post Bruce’s reports as they arrive – with the date of each post at the beginning of that post.
Here’s some information about Bruce – and awards he’s received for his writing:
Bruce Brown. Canadian born. Now living in Israel (for a long time). Bruce works in Israel’s hi-tech sector by day and, in spurts, is a somewhat inspired writer by night. He received the Americal Jewish Press Association’s award for writing excellence in 2019 and 2015. And wrote the1998 satire, “An Israeli is….”. Bruce’s visuals are AI-assisted and created with ChatGPT under his inimitable visual concept and creative direction. Bruce’s musings are political, social, economic and personal. With lots of biting, contrarian, sardonic, irreverent and mischievous insights.
