New website creates blacklist of 'pro-Palestinian' students to stop them getting jobs

A new website is publishing the names, portraits and biographies of individuals it claims are pro-Palestinian activists in a bid to prevent them from securing jobs.

Canary Mission, which says it is an organisation dedicated to “documenting acts of hate, exposing them and holding these individuals accountable”, has profiles of dozens of students, activists and academics - mostly based in the US.

Each profile shows a portrait, lists each person's current occupation or university course, photos or videos of them as well as documenting their supposed "anti-Freedom, anti-American and anti-Semitic" deeds.

A video published on its YouTube channel explains that the database can help to "ensure that today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees".

There’s no record of their membership of radical organisations. No one remembers their yelling profanities on campus or attending Jew-hating conferences and anti-American rallies. All evidence has been eradicated and soon they will be part of your team.

• Canary Mission

The website, which appears to have been running since March, publishes no names of its editors or those who fund it. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper based in the US, said that despite describing itself as a non-profit organisation Canary Mission is not registered with the IRS and the only contact detail available for it is a PO Box in the Bronx, New York.

“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," Ali Abunimah, founder of the pro-Palestinian website Electronic Intifada, told Haaretz. “It’s an effort to punish and deter people from standing up for what they believe.”

Rebecca Pierce, a student at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) who is listed on the website, told the Guardian that Canary Mission was using "openly racist" and "McCarthyist" tactics.

The website is filled with racist stereotypes about our activism, and intentionally tries to tie a diverse non-violent student movement to anti-semitism and terror.

• Rebecca Pierce

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