Name and shame: Pro-Israel website ramps up attacks on pro-Palestinian student protesters

Weeks after attending a pro-Palestinian demonstration, Egyptian-American student Layla Sayed received a text message from a friend drawing her attention to a website dedicated to exposing people it says promote hatred of Jews and Israel.

“I think they found you from the protest,” the friend wrote.

When Sayed visited the site, called Canary Mission, she found a photo from the Oct. 16 rally at the University of Pennsylvania with red arrows pointing to her among the demonstrators. The post included her name, the two cities she lives in, details about her studies and links to her social media accounts.

Canary Mission later posted a photo of her on its X and Instagram accounts labeled “Hamas War Crimes Apologist,” a reference to the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which around 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

In response to that raid, Israel launched a military offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.

Comments about Sayed from social media users poured in.

“No future for that c.nt,” one X user wrote. “Candidate for deportation to Gaza,” wrote another.

Although Sayed has long supported Palestinian causes, she said it was the first time she had participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Penn, and Canary Mission did not flag any other activities.

“My initial reaction was just absolute shock,” Sayed, a 20-year-old sophomore, told Reuters. “I wasn’t there to say I supported Hamas. I wasn’t there to say I hated Israel. I was there to say what’s happening in Palestine is wrong.”

She said she did not realize at the time that a chant Canary Mission took issue with, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified,” is considered by some as an expression of support for Hamas’ killings. She joined in the chants, she said, to show support for demonstrations.

Responding to an inquiry submitted via its website, Canary Mission said it has been “working around the clock” to combat a “wave of antisemitism” on college campuses since Oct. 7, including by exposing people who endorse Hamas.

Canary Mission did not respond to questions about Sayed’s profile or the online abuse directed against its targets, according to the comments from the site provided by a spokesperson from a Tel Aviv-based public relations firm, Gova10.

While Canary Mission relies on tips, it said it verifies what it publishes, drawing from publicly available sources. Canary Mission’s profiles include links to its targets’ social media posts, public speeches and interviews with journalists.

Penn officials did not respond to questions about Sayed’s case.

“Penn is focused on the well-being of all members of the community,” a university spokesperson, Steve Silverman, told Reuters, adding that staff reach out to offer support when aware of concerning situations.

Canary Mission is one of the oldest and most prominent of several digital advocacy groups that have intensified campaigns to expose Israel’s critics since the war broke out, often leading to harassment such as Sayed experienced. The people behind the site have kept their identities, location and funding sources hidden.

Reuters reviewed online attacks and abusive messages directed at scores of people targeted by Canary Mission since Oct. 7.

The site has accused over 250 US students and academics of supporting terrorism or spreading antisemitism and hatred of Israel since the start of the latest Gaza conflict, according to the Reuters review of its posts. Some are leading members of Palestinian rights groups or were arrested for offenses such as blocking traffic and punching a Jewish student. Others, like Sayed, said they had just stepped into campus activism and were not charged with any crimes.

Reuters spoke to 17 students and one research fellow from six US universities featured on Canary Mission since Oct. 7. They include other students who chanted slogans during protests, leaders of groups that backed statements saying Israel bears sole responsibility for the violence and people who argued in social media posts that armed resistance by Palestinians is justified. All but one said they had received hate messages or seen vitriolic comments posted about them online.

Messages reviewed by Reuters called for their deportation or expulsion from school or suggested they should be raped or killed.

Several pro-Palestinian groups that use similar tactics to call out Israel’s defenders have emerged in recent months. They include an X account called StopZionistHate and Raven Mission, a website launched in December that emulates Canary Mission by spotlighting people it accuses of Islamophobia or helping perpetuate atrocities against Palestinians.

Raven Mission did not respond to requests for comment. StopZionistHate said it wanted to “ensure that the American public is aware of the threat posed by Zionist extremism.”

ACCUSATIONS OF CYBERBULLYING

Some critics accuse sites on both sides of cyberbullying or doxxing, which they note can have a chilling effect on free expression.

Tensions have been mounting on US college campuses, where Israel’s war in Gaza has unleashed an outpouring of student activism. Some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been met with counter-protesters accusing them of fomenting anti-Jewish hatred and intimidating Jewish students on campus. Both camps have clashed with police.

The US Department of Education has opened investigations into dozens of colleges since Oct. 7, noting an “alarming nationwide rise” in reports of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and other forms of discrimination and harassment. It declined to provide details about these investigations, including whether any concern Canary Mission, Raven Mission or StopZionistHate, or incidents these groups have highlighted.

Across the US, pro-Palestinian student groups are advising followers to wear masks at protests, to avoid drawing unwelcome attention.

Canary Mission and its defenders argue that those who promote hatred and bigotry should be held to account. On its site, Canary Mission provides academic and employer details for the people it profiles, calling on its tens of thousands of followers to ensure “today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees.”

Ten of the students interviewed by Reuters feared that appearing on the site could derail their careers. Canary Mission is often at the top of its targets’ Google search results, and its social media posts can draw hundreds of comments.

For those targeted, there are few options to seek redress, lawyers and advocacy groups say. Much of what Canary Mission publishes is protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment on free speech, three lawyers told Reuters.

It generally isn’t illegal to publish information about someone without consent when the information is accurate and was acquired lawfully from the public domain, said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The legal standard for defamation is high, with the burden on claimants to prove the site made false statements about them, added Dylan Saba, an attorney at Palestine Legal, which represents pro-Palestinian activists. He could recall only a handful of cases where students succeeded in getting Canary Mission profiles changed or removed by threatening defamation suits.

The low profile of Canary Mission’s principals poses an additional hurdle.

“If you’re going to sue somebody, you have to know where you’re serving them,” Saba said.

Canary Mission says on its site that it will remove profiles of people who “recognize their earlier mistakes” and reject what it describes as “latent anti-Semitism” in groups that campaign for boycotts against Israel over its policies in the Palestinian territories. It publishes what it says are their apologies on an “ex-canary” page but does not identify the individuals.

Canary Mission told Reuters the site was established in 2015 to counter rising antisemitism on college campuses

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