US Congress should investigate Israel's intimidation blacklists

It was a scene reminiscent of the Red Scare days, of grainy black-and-white television images of political witch-hunts by the old House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). But rather than hunting for disloyal communist sympathisers, House Committee on Education and the Workforce members were instead hunting for university presidents disloyal to Israel.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?” quipped New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg. “You can see the trap.”

Among the leaders of this new McCarthyism is House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, whose forceful questioning during December's hearing led to the resignation of Liz Magill as president of the University of Pennsylvania.

“One down. Two to go,” said Stefanik, as if hunting for dangerous “commies” rather than college presidents. Stefanik later bagged her second top academic with the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay this month.

In focusing on campus semantics, Congress is failing to call into question actions that are far more serious and damaging to US interests.

Take the decades of illegal anti-Palestinian espionage, covert action and blacklisting of Americans within the US by the Israeli government and its domestic collaborators.

They range from dispatching a secret agent to interfere in a presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump; to launching a covert operation within the US that targets academics who support a boycott of Israel; to conducting a massive operation to spy on and “crush” pro-Palestinian students throughout the country; to establishing a secret Israeli-run troll farm across the US to harass anyone critical of Israel; to hiring Americans to secretly spy on American students and report back to Israeli intelligence.

And then there is Canary Mission, a massive blacklisting and doxxing operation directed from Israel that targets students and professors critical of Israeli policies, and then launches slanderous charges against them.

These charges are designed to embarrass and humiliate them, and damage their future employability. And this is all secretly funded by wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish-American foundations.

Following the Oct. 7 attack and the launch of Israel’s war on Gaza, members of Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (HPCS) sponsored a letter addressing the conflict.

“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” it said. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to 'open the gates of hell,' and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced."

The letter was co-signed by 33 other student organisations and published in the Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. Almost immediately, Canary Mission created online profiles for members of the Crimson’s editorial board, along with profiles of the leaders of the HPSC and other campus clubs that co-signed the letter.

The goal of the blacklist was to dox those named, encourage their harassment, and limit their future employment prospects.

“The Mission didn’t stop at creating profiles for student leaders,” noted Owen Ray, a writer for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. “They doxxed anybody even remotely involved in the publication of the letter. One listed student was a member of the Pakistan Students Association, a club which had co-signed the PSC statement. They were indirectly involved at best, but their membership with a cultural club was enough for the Mission to brand them as hateful antisemites. Another student was a member of the South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA), which also co-signed the controversial letter. They were placed on the website for no reason besides their SALSA membership.”

And once on the blacklist, it is nearly impossible to get off, Ray added. “They’re publishing personal information and holding it over people’s heads. It’s political extortion, it’s dystopian and it discourages political discourse.”

Not content with online slander and blacklisting, Canary Mission agents have also been involved in physical intimidation. At George Washington University, on the eve of a vote on a divestment resolution involving Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, two powerful men in yellow canary outfits suddenly turned up outside the building in which the vote was to take place.

They then engaged in a strange and frightening dance. Their purpose was to dramatically reinforce previous Canary Mission messages sent to students advising them to vote against the resolution and attack the student activists.

“There are no secrets. We will know your vote and will act accordingly,” said one threatening Canary Mission message. Abby Brook, a Jewish student at the school who was active in pro-Palestinian groups on campus, said she found the event “pretty unbelievably terrifying. These two fully grown, muscular men in these bird costumes, strutting.”

On the walk home that night, she said she was careful to watch her back. In‑your-face intimidation of students is the objective.

Like its campus spy operation, Israel on Campus Coalition, Canary Mission acts as a key intelligence asset for the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a highly secretive intelligence organisation that is largely focused on the US, and the Shin Bet security service.

Not only is it intended to silence anti-Israel dissent, its list of names are also used to prevent those individuals from entering Israel and attempting to visit family, including both Jews and Palestinians, and professors as well as students.

Among those listed is Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old Palestinian American student who was planning to study in a master’s program at Hebrew University in West Jerusalem. Although she had a valid visa, she was dragged in for interrogation shortly after landing at Tel Aviv’s airport.

During the process, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs sent over a document marked sensitive. It contained a printout from Canary Mission that listed her crime: She had served as a local chapter president of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida.

Even worse, her chapter had called for a boycott of some Israeli hummus. Afterward she was placed in detention for weeks pending deportation procedures. But following a protest letter signed by over 300 professors and other academics from the US and around the world “who reject all forms of racial profiling,” an Israeli court granted her appeal to enter the country.

Another victim was Columbia University Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who at one time sat on the academic advisory council steering committee for Jewish Voice for Peace. Upon landing in Tel Aviv, an officer at the airport showed her what appeared to be her Canary Mission profile. She was quickly deported and informed that she would be permanently banned from the country.

Like all of Israel’s espionage and covert operations in the US, Canary Mission’s links to Israeli intelligence—and the Mission’s American financiers—are well hidden.

But several media investigations uncovered clear evidence that much of the funding for Canary Mission comes from wealthy American Jews, such as the late Sanford Diller, a publicity-shy California billionaire. Support also comes from American Jewish organisations, including the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) of Los Angeles.

There is a key reason for so much secrecy. Those Americans who were financially supporting Canary Mission were potentially committing a serious crime, acting as agents of a foreign power.

They were financing a clandestine foreign organisation with ties to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, an Israeli intelligence agency — which was using Canary Mission to identify, detain and deport Americans entering the country, like Lara Alqasem and Katherine Franke.

Rather than drag university presidents up to Capitol Hill for a replay of the Red Scare/HUAC hearings, it’s time for the White House and Congress to at last rip the cover off Israel’s vast network of spies, collaborators and funders in the US.

Even if it means giving up millions in donations and political support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — the key reason why Israel remains immune from any investigation.

This article is an abridged version of a piece that first ran in The Nation in December 2023. Read the full article here.