Seattle museum cancels exhibit on antisemitism after staff walks out to protest Israel

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).”

“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.”

WSJHS added, “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.”

WSJHS and The Jewish Community Relations Council said, “The Jewish community needs to hear from Seattle - from our elected leaders, from business leaders, and people of good conscience - that Seattle is still a welcoming and safe home for Jews and that antisemitism has no place here. The silence is harmful to all.”

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat slammed the museum and the lack of outrage from supposedly liberal Seattle writing, "So we basically just book-banned a cultural exhibit. It also doesn’t seem like anyone’s really objecting to it." Democratic State Senator Jesse Salmon wrote in an op-ed for the outlet, saying "It is becoming increasingly politically challenging in this area to express ideas outside of a narrow bandwidth without unreasonable blowback."

The exhibit will now be seen online and as a pop-up experience at various synagogues and community organizations. It compares racism and hate faced by the Asian, black, and Jewish communities historically and in Seattle and was a project in the making for over a year as a partnership between The Wing Luke Museum, the Black Heritage Society of Washington State, and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society. It was based on a 2022 New York Historical Society exhibit “Confronting Hate” and augmented based on rising hate crimes in Washington and was in the works well before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

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.”

Anti-Israel activists demanded the museum remove any language that framed “anti-Zionism as antisemitism," insisted on a “community review” of the exhibit, for the museum to “acknowledge the limited perspectives presented in this exhibition,” and focus on “voices that align with the museum’s mission & values,” meaning those of the Palestinian, Muslim and Arab communities.

The activist staff members also compared the Asian, black, and Jewish groups that created the exhibit to white supremacists, claiming that their lives as Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islanders are part of the Palestinian experience, stating, “It sets a dangerous precedent of platforming colonial, white supremacist perspectives and goes against the Museum’s mission as a community-based museum advancing racial and social equity."

The Washington State Jewish Historical Society said at the time "This exhibit is and always has been about addressing hate at home in our Puget Sound Region, featuring local voices and lived experiences. Anti-Black hate, anti-Asian hate, and anti-Jewish hate are all on the rise."

The statement noted, "Just like any other marginalized group, the Jewish community should be allowed to name harm directed against us and share our lived experiences. The exhibit accurately portrays the local Jewish experience of antisemitism. This includes a 192% increase in 2023 in incidents of anti-Jewish harm in Washington state, many of which were perpetrated after October 7th.”