I. Jan 04, 2024 – Canary Mission: IDF Censorship Team Targets American Critics of Israel (Trunews broadcast Jan. 4, 2024)
Jan 04, 2024 – Canary Mission: IDF Censorship Team Targets American Critics of Israel
From James Bamford’s “Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors” (The Nation, Dec. 22, 2023)
Bamford: “Canary Mission is 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. Charges designed to embarrass and humiliate them. And damage their future employability. All secretly funded by wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish-American Foundations.”
Rick Wiles: “This the Israeli IDF propaganda operation to after Americans who criticize Israel. It has been going on in America for years. The people who are being doxxed, de-platformed, censored, having their business relationships severed because of their views about Israel…. It’s all being run from Israel. It is an Anti-American, anti-free speech, anti-US Consitutional operation by a foreign government. Treating Americans as enemy combatants. Waging warfare on American citizens. It’s cyberwarfare against American citizens, depriving American citizens of their constitutional rights.
Among Israel’s IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) covert operations against American citizens:
– Interfere in local elections
– Launch a covert operation in the US targeting students and professors who support a boycott of Israel (BDS).
– Blacklist critics of Israel so they will never get a job.
– Conduct a massive operation to spy on and crush pro-Palestinian students throughout the country.
– To establish a secret Israeli-run troll farm across the US to harass anyone critical of Israel.
– To hire Americans to secretly spy on American students and report back to Israeli intelligence.
Canary Mission: This is the Israeli propaganda operation to go after Americans who criticize Israel.
“Canary Mission: A massive blacklisting and doxxing operation that targets students and professors critical of Israeli all secretly funded by wealthy Jewish.
Jan 4, 2024
The overwhelming majority of the American public has been largely shielded from the harsh realities of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, aimed at the Palestinian population. It is observed that mainstream media outlets, including news networks, newspapers, magazines, and websites, are not providing accurate coverage of the events in Gaza. Instead, there appears to be a dominant narrative favoring Israeli perspectives, overshadowing alternative voices such as TruNews, which seeks to highlight the impact on Palestinian children and civilians.
Regarding the situation involving Harvard University, it has come to light that the Israeli military was behind the anti-Harvard propaganda campaign. This information was not widely discussed until recently.
Watch this FULL show exclusively on Faith & Values
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Rick Wiles re: the ongoing Genocide in Gaza/Palestine: This is the most horrible thing I’ve ever witnessed. Someday the Jews are going to bring this to your neighborhood. If the Zionists are not stopped that will be every neighborhood in the world. Because their intention is global domination. It is the purpose of Zionism to dominate the world. (The Jews) are going to kill and kill and kill until there is not one gentile still alive. They are rascist and they’re demonic. They’re intention is to kill all non-Jews. They see us Amalekites, that we have to be wiped out.”
3 Comments
@Marie.Quezada
56 minutes ago (edited)
America will sink if we don’t get a “Leaders”that promote collaboration, peace, unity and resolutions! We need new Leaders like:
Col Lawrence Wilkerson
Col Daniel Davis
Col Douglas Macgregor
Col Karen Kwaiatkowski
Scott Ritter former USMC intelligence officer, former UNSCOM
Judge Andrew Napolitano
II. Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors by James Bamford, Dec. 22, 2023
Americans who give money to Canary Mission are potentially committing a serious crime by acting as agents of a foreign power.
James Bamford
A pro-Palestinian protest of Harvard students and their supporters, ends on the lawn behind Klarman Hall, at Harvard Business School, after starting in the Old Yard by Massachusetts Hall.
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 sympathizers, committee members at early December’s hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce 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.”
What is missing from Congress are hearings into the decades of illegal anti-Palestinian espionage, covert action, and blacklisting of Americans within the United States by the Israeli government and its domestic collaborators—actions far more serious and damaging than campus semantics. As noted in my earlier articles for The Nation, 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 targeting academics and others 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—charges designed to embarrass and humiliate them and damage their future employability. All secretly funded by wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish American foundations.
Following the October 7 Hamas attack and the launch of Israel’s war in Gaza, members of Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (HPSC) 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 cosigned by 33 other student organizations and published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. Almost immediately, Canary Mission created online profiles for members of the Crimson’s editorial board (though a few likely already had one from when the Crimson endorsed divestment), along with profiles of the leaders of the HPSC and other campus clubs that cosigned 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,” notes Owen Ray in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.
They doxxed anybody even remotely involved in the publication of the letter. One listed student was a member of the Pakistani 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. “They’re publishing personal information and holding it over people’s heads,” writes Ray. “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 in 2018, on the eve of a vote on a student-government resolution calling on the university to divest from companies profiting from Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, two powerful men in yellow canary outfits suddenly turned up in the lobby of 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 Canary Mission flyers that had been posted around campus advising students to vote against the resolution and attacking 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, 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 organization that is largely focused on the United States, and the Shin Bet security service. Not only is it intended to silence anti-Israel dissent; its list of names is 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 them was Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old Palestinian American student who was planning to study in a master’s program at the Hebrew University of 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 profile 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 her landing in Tel Aviv, an official at the airport showed her what appeared to be her Canary Mission profile. After being kept in detention for 14 hours, she was deported and informed that she would be permanently banned from the country.
Like all of Israel’s espionage and covert operations in the United States, Canary Mission’s links to Israeli intelligence—and the Mission’s American financiers—are well hidden. But as a result of a slipup on a tax form a few years ago, those links began to be revealed. And in the process was exposed the role played by one of the wealthiest families in California, headed by publicity-shy billionaire Sanford Diller, a major Trump backer who had donated $6 million to a pro-Trump political committee. Diller was also a pro-Israel extremist, supporting a long list of right-wing Islamophobic organizations. They included the American Freedom Law Center, founded by a man who even the Anti-Defamation League said has a “record of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry,” and Stop Islamization of America, which “has sought to rouse public fears about a vast Islamic conspiracy to destroy American values,” according to the ADL.
For donations to a variety of causes, the Diller family maintains the Helen Diller Family Foundation. But in order to get a tax break, they turn the funds over to a much larger trust, the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, which then channels the Diller family donations. According to The Forward (formerly The Jewish Daily Forward), in 2016 the Diller Foundation donated $100,000 through the Jewish Community Federation to an obscure Israeli nonprofit called Megamot Shalom. Untraceable, off the grid, unheard of, Megamot Shalom was actually the front for Canary Mission.
Confident that their dark donations would never be revealed, other donors around the country poured cash into Megamot Shalom via similar charities, among them the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) of Los Angeles. There, a contributor, whose name remains legally hidden by the foundation’s rules, donated another quarter of a million dollars to Canary Mission’s front. The JCF of Los Angeles manages assets of more than $1.3 billion and, like San Francisco’s Jewish Federation, has distributed millions to right-wing pro-occupation groups. Yet at the same time, it turns down donations to human rights groups opposed to the occupation, as foundation board member Lisa Greer discovered. When she attempted to donate $5,000 to IfNotNow, a Jewish group against the occupation, the foundation rejected her contribution. “I’d never heard of this happening before,” she said. “I was beyond shocked. I really did start shaking.”
III. Who Funds Canary Mission? James Bamford on Group That Doxxes Students & Profs for Palestine Activism
Longtime investigative journalist James Bamford’s latest piece for The Nation looks at Canary Mission, a shadowy pro-Israel group that publishes the photos and personal details of students who take part in Palestinian advocacy on U.S. colleges, branding them antisemites and often damaging their career prospects. Bamford explains how this operation has direct links to the Israeli government, and that wealthy Americans who fund this effort could be breaking the law by acting as agents of a foreign power. “The purpose is to blacklist and dox students, professors, and largely anybody who disagrees with Israel or is pro-Palestinian,” Bamford tells Democracy Now!
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We look now at what some are calling the “Palestine exception” to free speech and academic freedom on college campuses across the United States. Soon we’ll hear from a student and professor at Barnard, but we begin with a new report by longtime investigative journalist James Bamford in a series for The Nation on Israel’s spying and covert actions in the United States against pro-Palestinian students, supporters and groups. It’s headlined, the latest piece, “Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors.” Last month, Jim Bamford wrote a piece headlined “Israel’s War on American Student Activists.” He’s joining us now from Washington, D.C.
James Bamford, welcome back to Democracy Now! Tell us what the Canary Mission is.
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it’s a very massive program that’s been going on for years and years. It’s secretly run out of Israel. And the purpose is to blacklist and dox students, professors, and largely anybody that disagrees, largely, with Israel or is pro-Palestinian.
Many, many people suddenly wake up, and they find out people are calling them and saying, “Your name is on a blacklist,” the Canary Mission blacklist. And, you know, it’s designed to intimidate these people, to get them to stop joining pro-Palestinian groups or to stop being activists and to comply with whatever the people behind Canary Mission want. And that’s basically to silence them.
And the threat is that if you don’t be silent, then, you know, your name is going to go on the blacklist, and if you go look for a job when you get out of — when you graduate, or if you’re trying to rise up in the professional ranks or a professorship, it’s going to be blocked, because your name is on this list. And it’s almost impossible to get off the list. So, that’s just one of the many ways that the Israeli government has been pushing the American public, basically, to steer away from pro-Palestinian activism.
AMY GOODMAN: But how do you know that the Israeli government runs the Canary Mission? And why is it called the Canary Mission?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, I don’t know why it’s called Canary Mission. It has something to do with canaries in the mine or something like that.
AMY GOODMAN: In the coal mine?
JAMES BAMFORD: Yeah, I guess so. The organization that runs it is very, very secret. Two of the organizations that looked into it was the Jewish Forward magazine and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and they determined that it was being run secretly from a place in Israel, very secret place in Israel, and that there was a rabbi behind it. Tracing all these links back is very difficult, but that’s where they traced it, to these people in Israel that were basically running it. A lot of the funding comes from — and again, this is from Haaretz and also from The Forward — a lot of the funding comes from American — wealthy Jewish Americans and Jewish American foundations, millions of dollars and so forth. So that’s where a lot of the funding comes from.
The Israeli government gets involved, because they use Canary Mission as a tool. So, if people are coming over from the United States, either Jewish or Palestinian — they’re maybe going to visit families — they look at Canary Mission. They actually have it there, and they look at it. And they’ll kick people out of Israel. They’ll land at the airport. They’ll be questioned — and they’ll be questioned because their name is on Canary Mission — and then be deported, held in confinement for, you know, a couple days or whatever, and then deported. That’s happened numerous times to people. Again, they tried keeping secret the fact that they’re using Canary Mission, but a number of the professors and students who have been thrown out have seen that their name is on the — the guards at the airport or the inspectors are checking their names off the Canary Mission list. So, there’s a heavy involvement of the Israeli government in there, in this. It’s run by mysterious Israelis, and it’s funded by pro-Israeli money in the United States. So, Israel has its fingers all over Canary Mission.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James Bamford, could you talk about the reasoning and the context in which they created online profiles, Canary Mission did, for members of The Harvard Crimson’s editorial board, the student newspaper?
JAMES BAMFORD: Sure. Soon after October 7th, the attack, the student newspaper came out — well, there were about 33 organizations that supported a statement basically saying this all didn’t start on October 7th, these activities have been going on for a long time, the fighting between Israel and Palestine, with the Palestinians, obviously, being on the losing side of the war against them by the Israelis. So they were basically saying that, look, it didn’t just start on October 7.
Well, that created a storm of opposition. And almost immediately, almost all the people involved found themselves on Canary Mission, even people tangentially involved that happened to sign this letter. So, that’s how it works. You know, you want to intimidate these people into not being an activist. Then you create this blacklist and doxxing, that tells where they are and who they are, and basically creates a dossier of them on this list. And so —
AMY GOODMAN: Jim, didn’t that happen —
JAMES BAMFORD: — you don’t want to get on the list. You don’t — activists —
AMY GOODMAN: Didn’t that happen when The Harvard Crimson had an editorial supporting BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions?
JAMES BAMFORD: Exactly, yeah. That’s, you know, any — it’s not just at Harvard. It’s at schools all over the United States. And Harvard was one perfect example. When they had that student letter come out and it was published in The Harvard Crimson, a lot of people the who were on that, who signed that letter, ended up on the blacklist for Canary Mission. So, again, it’s a tool for intimidation. And a lot of times it works.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And who are some of the prominent American donors who are involved in funding this effort?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, it’s very difficult to find that, because it’s secret who donates money to the organization, largely secret. There was a mistake some group made on a tax form. And what that showed was at least one of the groups was the Diller family in California. They’re one of the wealthiest families in California, billionaires. And they had donated $100,000 to the front organization of Canary Mission. It’s a thing called Megamot Shalom. It’s basically a front organization in Israel.
And so, what they did was they donated $100,000 through the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. And then, from there, it went to another organization, the Central Fund for Israel, which is set up in New York, because if they send the money directly to Israel, they don’t get a tax advantage. So, by sending it through the sort of front organization, the Central Fund for Israel — or, Central Fund of Israel, in New York, then they get a tax advantage. And then the Central Fund of Israel just forwards the money to Megamot Shalom, the front organization for Canary Mission, and then it goes to Canary Mission.
And again, this was very difficult to figure out, because there are so many obstacles to trying to find out how the money actually goes from these wealthy individuals and organizations to this group in Israel. And so —
AMY GOODMAN: You’re saying the Canary Mission should have to sign up as a foreign agent?
JAMES BAMFORD: Well, yeah. I’m saying that the people who — first of all, this is a clandestine organization. It’s very secretive. It’s hidden behind a front company in — or, front organization in Israel, and it’s being used by the Israeli intelligence to find people that they could deny entry at the airport and deport and so forth. So, this is an organization that’s secret. It’s being used by the Israeli government to the detriment of American citizens. So, if you’re contributing to it, you could be considered a — contributing to a foreign entity, and you could be considered an agent of a foreign government.
So, those are issues that should be looked into. You know, I’ve been doing all these stories. I’ve talked to numerous FBI agents, and the FBI agents are fully in favor of actually taking cases. The problem is, once they try to bring these cases up the channels to the Justice Department, nothing ever happens.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jim, we’re going to have to —
JAMES BAMFORD: So, no matter what it is —
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. We’re going to be speaking with a Barnard professor, but you do write about a Columbia University Law School professor, Katherine Franke, who at one time sat on the academic advisory council steering committee of Jewish Voice for Peace. Upon her landing in Tel Aviv, you write, an official at the airport showed her what appeared to be her Canary Mission profile. After being held in detention for 14 hours, she was deported and informed that she would be permanently banned from Israel. Just one example. Jim Bamford, we want to thank you for being with us, investigative journalist, well known for exposing National Security Agency, the CIA. The New York Times has called him “the nation’s premier journalist on the subject of the NSA.” The New Yorker called him “the NSA’s chief chronicler.” We’ll link to your series in The Nation, including the last one, “Who Is Funding Canary Mission?”