By Randa Darwish
Canary Mission, an online blacklist of pro-palestinian students run by anonymous parties that hides under the cover of combating a rise in anti-Semitism, documents dossiers of more than 2,000 names who have their personal information and their political views posted beside a profile picture on the website.
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While information collected by the website claimed to be from “publicly available sources”, it is believed to be mainly used as an intelligence source by the Israeli border control officers. A recently-released report by the Forward highlighted the story of Andrew Kadi, a Palestinian American activist who was interrogated three times in Tel Aviv airport when he arrived in to visit his family.
Kadi realised they were using his Canary Mission profile only when he saw the third and latest interrogator while opening his profile to read from it.
The Canary Mission, that is run by a British-born Jerusalem resident named Jonathan Bash, has been targeting mostly Palestinian, Muslim, Arab and black activists who express their pro-Palestinian views, or individuals affiliated to any anti-Israel organization.
The website contains three categories of lists that contain names of individuals, organizations and professors. Among the organizations are Hamas, the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), the news website Mondoweiss, Jewish for Peace and dozens others.
The Canary Mission has been controversial since it was first launched in 2015, when its owners said it wanted to keep pro-Palestine student activists from getting work after college or entering Israel.
Not only this, the website also offers you the chance to be an “ex-Canary” - if any of the activists had “the moral courage to recognize their earlier mistakes,” they have to contact the website to be removed from the website. They will also have their names removed from the list “due to a fear of harassment."
However, the website’s credibility has been questioned after several incidents in which pro-Israeli activists claimed they are being blacklisted by the website for things they never said.
