Leading Jewish groups call on rights museum board to 'rectify' Nabka exhibit failures and hold CEO 'accountable'

The CEOs of prominent Canadian Jewish organizations have written a joint letter protesting the “serious failure of governance, curation, and public trust” of the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights exhibit, Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, and demanding change.

The letter accuses the museum’s CEO Isha Khan of not “engaging constructively” in developing the exhibit, and instead of responding “with a troubling lack of transparency, integrity, and meaningful dialogue.”

Signed by Simon Wolle, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, Noah Shack, CEO of Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and CEOs of Jewish federations from across Canada, the letter urges CMHR board of trustees’ chair Benjamin Nycum and the board “to rectify the failures in curation and governance and hold Ms. Khan accountable.”

The CEOs make their case for accountability, stating that attempts were made by the Jewish community to engage the museum and “ensure the exhibit met the standards of historical accuracy, scholarly integrity, and meaningful consultation,” by offering input from subject-matter experts, instead of the CMHR “relying on the advice of political activists.”

And now there have been “real-world consequences,” write the CEOs, with the exhibit pitting communities against one another and emboldening audiences to express Jew hatred, including using the exhibit to advocate against the museum’s Jewish founder, Izzy Asper (as shown in a CIJA X post ): “Reconciliation is renaming Izzy Asper Street, Free Palestine.”

The CIJA post also asked whether the museum’s leadership “support a national museum giving a platform to extremists calling for the erasure of Jewish people from public life?’”

For months, we warned that @CMHR_News' "Nakba" exhibit prioritized political activism over the standards of balance, governance, and curatorial integrity expected of a national museum.Yesterday, the Heritage Minister confirmed that the museum's leadership failed in both… https://t.co/05naPW5jO5 pic.twitter.com/h2nJdsiTdh

— CIJA (@CIJAinfo) June 30, 2026

The CEOs’ letter cites Prime Minister Mark Carney’s June 1 address to the Jewish community in Toronto , when he advocated for Canadians “not (to) transpose foreign conflicts onto each other” and public institutions “to ensure that no Canadian community is driven from those institutions by hatred.”

The letter also refers to the recent exhibit response from Marc Miller, federal minister of Identity and Culture that it is “regrettable” and “a failure.” As reported in the National Post , Miller said in late June that “not identifying Hamas as a terrorist organization is, I think, a failure. And not clearly stating that, for example, Hamas intended to kill Jews is, I think, an unfortunate error in curation and should be rectified.”

However, rather than addressing concerns, Khan simply “encouraged” the Jewish community to trust the museum’s process, write the CEOs.

There was “an intentional effort to keep representatives of the community and experts who could provide a supportive lens to the curation team out of the process. Even the museum’s own Board of Trustees was kept at a distance. This lack of oversight was among the factors that led the Museum’s only Jewish trustee to resign .”

The letter points, in particular, to Khan sitting for an interview with anti-Israel activist Samira Mohyeddin as part of the exhibit’s launch.

Khan has publicly stated that the “exhibit isn’t a historical retrospective.” In an interview she did last November with CBC radio in Winnipeg, excerpted in The Jewish Post and News , she called the exhibit “human rights stories about displacement” developed in consultation “with a really wide network of Palestinian Canadians and others from across Canada.”

She continued: “This exhibit is about the experiences of Palestinian Canadians who have lived through forced displacement and their families. So it’s told from their perspective, from their eyes, just like many other exhibits in the museum are.”

The CEOs say ignoring the warnings shared by the Jewish community has resulted in “an exhibit that risks inflaming hatred and importing a foreign conflict into Canadian society without the balance, rigour, and context required of a national museum.”

National Post has reached out to the CMHR for further comment.

The CIJA told National Post it is joining B’nai Brith to mobilize Canadians across the country to call on the CMHR board of trustees to “do its job as Marc Miller has stated.”

• Nakba exhibit 'should be rectified,' Heritage Minister Marc Miller says
• Jewish board member resigns over Nakba exhibit at Canadian human rights museum

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