‘Covert’ Canary Mission website exposes notorious anti-Israel provocateurs

A number of America’s most vituperative anti-Israel activists woke up on Feb. 17 to discover that they had been named and spotlighted by a mysterious new website called Canary Mission, visible at 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.

Individuals profiled on Canary Mission range from leaders of 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 including YouTube, Twitter, press releases, news clips, and interviews.

Canary Mission took a lead 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 labelled as McCarthy-like in its actions even though its modus operendi is the opposite of McCarthyism (defined by Wikipedia as “the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence”). Canary Mission relies on vetted, publically 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 publically verifiable information into a single place.