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

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. Photo by SEBASTIEN ST-JEAN/AFP via Getty Images

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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?’”

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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.”

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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.”

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

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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.”