Letter from Bill Narvey, Winnipeg to Jewish leaders at CIJA, Bnai Brith, and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada

What Response Have Jewish Leaders  Received From CMHR and/or our Federal Government to Serious Concerns and Objections Raised Against the CMHR Palestinian Nakba Exhibit, April 25, 2026

To:                Belle Jarniewski – Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, Noah Shack, CEO and President of CIJA, Gustavo Zentner, Vice President of CIJA for Saskatchewan and Manitoba ,  Simon Wolle, CEO of B’Nai Brith Canada and Jay Harris Board Chair B’Nai Brith Canada

CC:              Jeff Lieberman, CEO Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and Carrie Shenkarow, Board Chair of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg

Bcc.              My contacts who I believe share our leaderships’ and my deep concerns and objections to CMHR’s planned Palestinian Nakba exhibit and wish to know what response, good, bad, indifferent or any at all, that has been or not been received from CMHR’s CEO Isha Khan to your concerns/objections and if you raised same with Marc Miller Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and/or our federal government, what response if any did you get from them.

Re:     What Response Have Jewish Leaders Received From CMHR and/or our Federal Government to Serious Concerns and Objections Raised Against the CMHR Palestinian Nakba Exhibit

Dear Belle, Noah, Gustavo, Simon and Jay,

On November 19th, 2025 the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (under Belle Jarniewski’s leadership)  issued a strongly worded press release in response to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights announced its intention to open its Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present | CMHR exhibit in June 2026.  That statement raising strong objections to CMHR’s planned exhibit in a number of significant respects is found at.  News Release November 19, 2025 - Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada

One such objection related to CMHR in past consulting with Jewish leaders regarding the planning of exhibits having to do in some respects with Israel and or Jews, but this time CMHR failed to consult Jewish leadership at all.

Other objections related by implication to deep concerns that the exhibit would be presenting the false Palestinian history of claimed suffering, dispossession of their lands and rights to their own independent state at the hand of the Jews and then Israel that has been bound up in Palestinian false historical revisionism, their history of generational genocidal Islamic Jihadi hatred of Jews/Israel that of course has fueled their evil terrorism for over a century, the false Hamas/Palestinian Jew-Israel hating propagandized accusations and lies that Palestinian leaders have indoctrinated their people in from cradle to grave and the fact that Palestinian leaders since the Oslo Accords have been offered a chance for a state of their own within the context of the two state solution, which Palestinian leadership has consistently rejected given their unchanging resolute ultimate goal to gain enough power to destroy Israel, eradicate the Jews and then taking all of Israel’s land for themselves in order to have Israel’s land returned to Islamic dominion as it was during the Ottoman Empire that ended in 1922.

That press release statement was not as blunt as my foregoing advice, but still the concerns and objections all flowed from what I have described.

On November 20th, 2025  Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs – CIJA issued a communique raising concerns and objections to CMHR’s decision to open its Nakba exhibit without having consulted the Jewish community leadership as CMHR has done in past.  CIJA Calls for Accountability in CMHR’s Proposed Exhibit - CIJA - The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

On November 25th, 2025 B’Nai Brith Canada issued a communique expressing equally strong concerns and objections to CMHR’s decision to go ahead with its Nakba exhibit:

B’nai Brith Canada Urges CMHR to Consult Jewish Groups Amid Proposed Exhibit Controversy - B'nai Brith Canada

CIJA’s and B’Nai Brith’s communique like that of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada were not as blunt as I have described the Palestinian indoctrinated lived lies they have told and convinced themselves of from generation to generation.

One point made in all three of these statements is quoting from B’Nai’ Brith Canada’s communique is:

“ the Museum has not responded to suggestions from the Jewish community that, for such an exhibit, it would be reasonable to include, for example, the stories of the 850,000 Jews who were uprooted from parts of the Middle East and North Africa during the late 1940-1970s.”

I was and remain puzzled by that suggestion.

The fact is that the expulsion of 850,000 Jews from Mid East and North African Muslim countries is the one and only evil thing that the Palestinians are not responsible for.

That responsibility is on the Muslim nations that sought to destroy Israel on May 15, 1948 that after losing their genocidal war to destroy Israel and eradicate all Jews, refused to take in a grant citizenship to the Palestinians, the majority of whom voluntarily left their lands in the British Palestinian Mandatory lands to get out of the way of the genocidal Arab armies. Instead, the United Nation’s that pandered to the Arab world quickly established UNRWA and many refugee camps for Palestinians could live with the support of the UN/UNRWA, the plan being until Israel could be forced to take in all those refugees into their nation.

The UN then was already biased in favour of the Muslim world and against Israel and Jews.  As we have witnessed over many years, the UN/UNRWA is an uncompromising committed anti-Israel-antisemitic organization that in addition to our reaching that conclusion on our own, we are supported by the many Jewish and Christian writers, historians, UN monitoring organizations and political activists who have laid out that case in exquisite historical detail.

It is now 5 months since all three of your organizations expressed your serious strong concerns and objections to CMHR’s plan to open the Nakba exhibit in June 2026.

Our Jewish community has not been updated on what response, good, bad, indifferent or any at all that you have or have not yet received from CMHR’s CEO Isha Khan.

Given the seriousness of your concerns and objections that you expressed last November to CMHR regarding their planned Nakba exhibit for this coming June, which concerns and objections are shared by our entire Jewish community, I would have expected you all would have followed up on what if any effect your concerns and objections raised to CMHR have had.

That you have been silent in that regard, is per se concerning and implies your appeals to CMHR have been ignored in the main if not entirely.

We have however, since November 2025 learned how active a number of Muslim/left wing pro-Hamas/Palestinian-anti-Israel-anti-Zionist-antisemitic activists and organizations have been active for years calling on CMHR to open an exhibit that tells the Palestinian story.  We learned about how these organizations and Canadian Palestinian and left wing Jew-Israel hating bigots cheered when CMHR announced it would be opening a Nakba exhibit this coming June.

We have furthermore learned that a number of Palestinians in Winnipeg such as Palestinian Rana Abdulla who has long been a pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel-antisemitic advocate and activist and others elsewhere in Canada who were instrumental in advising and guiding CMHR on what the Nakba Exhibit must display.  You can get a good sense of the pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel-antisemitic lies that this exhibit will display by what CMHR’s own Nakba website states.  For instance:

“ Palestinians use the word al‐Nakba — Arabic for “the catastrophe” — to describe their forced displacement in 1948. At least 750,000 people were expelled by militias and the Israeli military or fled as the conflicts grew. Most of those who were displaced believed they would return in a few days or weeks. Five generations later, these people and their descendants still live with insecurity and uncertainty and are unable to return home.

The exhibition Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present explores the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. Featuring personal stories told through objects and video testimonies, the exhibition presents Palestinian Canadians reflecting on their ongoing struggle for justice and human rights. Together with art, photos, and text, these elements reveal enduring patterns of loss and resistance.

For Palestinians, the Nakba is both their history and their present — it is an ongoing process shaping every aspect of life today.

I just yesterday received an email from an important pro-Israel-pro-Jewish-pro-truth Christian voice, Reverend Don James of Bridges for Peace Canada.  In that email, was included a video of a powerful address by Rev. James entitled A Travesty of Misinformation is Unfolding at the CMHR A Travesty of Misinformation is Unfolding at the CMHR .

Rev. James asks that all who share his and our Jewish community’s concerns and objections with the CMHR’s upcoming Nakba exhibit based on what CMHR itself has described will be a pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel false historical revisionist narrative and various lies that Palestinians have told themselves for generations that their plight, their suffering, their alleged lack of rights and self determination in having their own independent state is all the fault of Israel and the Jews, when in fact not only the Arab nations, but the Palestinians themselves are solely to blameshould make their views known to:

Canada’s Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture which includes authority over CMHR:  marc.miller@parl.gc.ca  and to

Dr. Isha Khan, CEO of CMHR:  isha.Khan@humanrights.ca

To conclude, I am asking you to advise our community on what if any response, good, bad, indifferent or none at all you have had from CMHR’s CEO Isha Khan (and Minister Marc Miller if you included him)  in raising your strong concerns and objections to CMHR’s Palestinian Nakba exhibit, now expected to open in a bit more than a month.

Further, assuming you have not convinced CMHR to cancel this Nakba exhibit or ensure it presents truths and not lies, what plans if any do you have to attend the opening to bear witness.

If the exhibit presents a pro-Palestinian-anti-Israel-antisemitic narrative as it appears it will to some serious extent even by what information is set out in the CMHR Nakba website, I urge you to have a strategic tactical plan in place to take a strong uncompromising position not only against CMHR but Minister Marc Miller and indeed the entire federal government and further to publicly speak out against the CMHR Nakba exhibit to ensure as many Canadians as possible will be disabused of the lies this Nakba exhibit will tell and thus will come to know the truth regarding Israel and Palestinians.

Finally, if you are planning on taking action in furtherance of your raised concerns and objections to CMHR’s Nakba exhibit, what can us members of the Jewish community do to support your efforts to that end?

I do hope we hear from all of you.

Sincerely,

Bill Narvey