On February 17, a number of America’s most vituperative anti-Israel activists woke up to discover they had been named and spotlighted by a mysterious new website called Canary Mission (www.canarymission.org).
The site boldly aggregates the public statements, videos, and photographs of leading members of the organized movement against Israel in their most telling and often most demonstrative moments. The profiled individuals span a gamut of track records ranging from those with leadership roles with such intensely anti-Israel groups as Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Student Association to unaffiliated campus agitators who regularly advocate for the destruction of Israel and even the murder of Jews. All its profiles are compiled from public Internet sources such as YouTube, Twitter, press releases, news clips, and interviews.
In essence, Canary Mission took a card from the New Israel Fund, which some years ago helped finance the Coalition of Women for Peace that created the Who-Profits database that acted as a global compass of Israeli commercial activity for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions strategies. Canary Mission flipped the card and blacklisted the blacklisters.
Because Canary Mission works beneath a complete shroud of secrecy, it has been called “shadowy.” It is commonly labeled as McCarthy-like by leading Jewish and mainstream media, even though its modus operendi is the opposite of McCarthyism. Canary Mission relies on vetted, publicly visible pictures, protest placards, open statements, and video clips that speak for themselves and are primarily drawn from previously well-publicized activities.
In other words, Canary Mission aggregates publicly verifiable information into a single place. It is not clear why media outlets have not made the historical distinction or provided context.
At press time, more than 120 individuals and six leading anti-Israel organizations are pictured in the Canary Mission alphabetized gallery, with more being added daily. The site’s database is searchable by name, organization, college, or “other.” For example, when “UCLA” is searched, the results show news, developments, and pictured individuals associated with UCLA in one combined list.
Canary Mission does not hide its intent of ensuring that the virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic protest actions, disruptions, defamation campaigns, and intimidation tactics follow the perpetrators beyond the campus into their settled-down jobs and career years. A Canary Mission YouTube video invites prospective employers to consider the past record of demonstrative anti-Semitic and anti-Israel conduct. For example at 00:23, the Canary Mission YouTube video screens a 2009 hijab-wearing Ft. Lauderdale protestor chanting at pro-Israel supporters: “Go back to the ovens. You need a big oven, that’s what you need.”
It wasn’t long before Canary Mission became the target of extreme obscenity-laced anti-Semitic comments as well as open threats of violence. The hacker group Anonymous vowed to retaliate against the website and even opened an attack Twitter account.
With threats of violence and intimidation, Canary Mission restricted its communication with all journalists and inquiring souls to e-mail and social media. Voice contact became strictly verboten. Typical was an article in one prominent Jewish newspaper that related, “A person named Joanna responded via e-ail to a request for comment from the group, agreeing to an interview but then not calling this reporter over two days. Joanna also did not respond to a list of questions submitted about the group.”
A few moments after this writer read that newspaper article, I sent a four-word e-mail “contact me back thanks” submitted at the Canary Mission website contact link. Within a half hour, the same Joanna e-mailed back: “Would love to be in touch.” That began a months-long stream of almost daily journalistic communications involving e-mails long and short, Skype sessions, as well as file downloads and text exchanges with many answers to many questions.