A shady new website has begun ‘doxing’ or publishing the identities of pro-Palestinian American student activists in the hopes of stopping them from getting jobs after they graduate from university.
Yet the website is keeping its owner’s identity a secret.
“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator says in a professional quality video posted to the site’s YouTube channel.
The site, dubbed Canary Mission, has thus far posted the personal information of dozens of students and recent graduates, as well as those of prominent activists like Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (DBS) movement.
Organizations that are having their members doxed include Students for Justice in Palestine and students who were involved in recent pro-BDS student measures at campuses in California.
Many of the students, however, are not hardcore activists but just concerned students, drawing attention to Israeli genocide, human rights abuses and the massacre of civilians.
“The focus on young people and students is an effort to try to tell people that there will be a price for you taking a political position,” said Ali Abunimah, who founded the pro-Palestinian website The Electronic Intifada. “It’s an effort to punish and deter people from standing up for what they believe.”
The website is also attacks a fundamentally American concept: The right to free speech. Political activism is a rich American tradition and those who engage in it should be celebrated not harassed.
Harassment, such as by doxing, leads to chilling effects, stifling free speech and reducing the level of political dialog in our country.
The Canary Mission website, despite playing fast and loose with the identities of others has gone to great lengths to obscure the identities of its own members and supporters.
The website does not list the names of its staff volunteers, members, donors or allies on the site. No identity information can be found from the site’s domain name registration, mailchimp email account or its hosting provider.
The individual dossiers on the Canary Mission’s site are lengthy, detailed and creepy.
The files include videos and photographs of the activists, lists their majors, links to Facebook pages, Twitter pages and LinkedIn profiles, as well as lengthy descriptions of pro-Palestinian student groups and movements to which these students are allegedly linked.
“I think it’s creepy and I think it’s McCarthyist,” said Max Geller, an SJP member who is profiled on the site. “This is not a badge of honor. This is scary.”
Geller went on to say that some of what is written about him on the site is not true, and that he has contacted an attorney.
We encourage all readers to get in touch with Canary Mission and tell them how un-American their behavior is. We, as a country, encourage political debate, we don’t stifle it, regardless of your views on hot-button political issues.
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