 "Canary Mission: The mysterious website targeting pro-Palestine college students in US")
On Tuesday (March 25), Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk, who is completing her doctoral from Tufts University, was heading out to meet her friends for Iftar, the evening meal to break her Ramzan fast, in Somerville, Massachusetts when six individuals in plainclothes — with some of them partially covering their faces — approached her and forcibly restrained her.
It later emerged that the men were US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and were arresting Ozturk for allegedly “engaging in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organisation that relishes the killing of Americans.”
Since then, she has been moved to an ICE detention centre in Louisiana while her lawyer Mahsa Khanbabai has filed a petition in Boston federal court late on Tuesday, arguing that Ozturk had been unlawfully detained.
It now emerges that Ozturk’s detention comes days after a pro-Israel group called the Canary Mission reportedly posted an image of her on their website and claimed that she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in March 2024,” referring to her opinion essay criticising her university’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.
This is Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national being deported for “activities in support of Hamas,” according to DHS.
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) March 27, 2025
Sources point to her Canary Mission profile as the primary cause. pic.twitter.com/qLTo0Vc2Lj
This has prompted many to ask what is the Canary Mission, the group demonising pro-Palestine students.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWhat is Canary Mission?
In its own words, Canary Mission, which began in 2015, said it was created out of concern for “the rise of antisemitic hate crimes on college campuses, and the dangerous Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement”.
For the unaware, the BDS movement is one in which organisations and institutions are urged to boycott and divest from Israel until they provide the “fundamental rights to Arab-Palestinian citizens. Since the Israel war on Hamas, which began in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks, this movement has seen a rise in supporters, especially from US college students.
Canary Mission’s website says it is dedicated to documenting individuals and organisations “that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond”. It further adds that it wants to combat the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
If you want further explanation of what is the Canary Mission, then their video in 2015 is the perfect source. The two-minute clip features images of Jews with yellow stars on their clothes followed by images of hijab-clad women waving Palestinian flags. The video’s female narrator closes by saying, “It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees.”
But what does the Canary Mission do? It publishes a blacklist which ‘doxxes’ the identity and details of US college students who participate in anti-Israel protests. In fact, they were suspended from X in 2018, but their account was quickly reinstated.
In July 2024, USA Today reported that Canary Mission had profiled more than 1,500 students and nearly 900 faculty members across US campuses. Moreover, For many college students, the information on the website of Canary Mission becomes the top result in an online search – making it the first thing a potential employer or school might see when considering an application.
“Canary Mission is kind of like a cautionary tale that’s told to a lot of activists,” said 20-year-old US student Will Mleczko, who also found himself on Canary Mission’s webpage, to USA Today. He added that he worried that if prospective employers “find you on there, they will probably not hire you. You’ll be blacklisted.”
Who’s behind Canary Mission?
Little to no details are available on who’s behind Canary Mission and how it is funded. But investigation after investigation by journalists has shed some light on the website and the people responsible for it.
Josh Nathan-Kazis of The Forward, in 2018, identified the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco as one Canary Mission funder. In response to the article, the federation announced it would stop giving money to the group.
Al Jazeera’s investigative film The Lobby – USA also revealed that Adam Milstein, an Israeli-American real estate magnate, is a funder of Canary Mission. Milstein denied this claim but praised the blacklist.
It has also been reported that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs uses Canary Mission as an intelligence asset. Haaretz in one news report said that the department was using information from the controversial right-wing website Canary Mission, to bar political activists from entering the country.
How does Canary Mission’s blacklist work?
The shadowy body has a blacklist through which it targets not only students, but “professors,” “professionals” and “organisations.” Moreover, the group has stated that there’s only one way to get off the blacklist — send a written apology.
On the blacklist, information such as personal information, quotes, photos, videos, institutional affiliations, and links to friends and colleagues is shared. In one paper, the Middle East Studies Association writes, “The material in each profile is framed so as to make the individual or organisation appear monstrous, guilty of raving anti-Semitism and/or support for terrorism.”
Many students who have been ‘doxxed’ by Canary Mission reveal the dangers and perils of being on the blacklist.
For instance, there’s the case of Nadine Jawad, the vice president of student government at the University of Michigan. She revealed to the Middle East Eye in a 2018 report that despite her academic excellence, a Canary Mission profile emerged, accusing her of associating with anti-Semites who promote “terrorists”.
There’s also Layla Saliba, a graduate student and campus organiser at New York’s Columbia University. After 14 of her family members died in Israel’s bombing of a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City, she started protesting for Palestinian rights last October, which eventually led to being ‘blacklisted’.
Canary Mission accuses her of providing “support for terrorists” and “hatred of Israel and America.”
Saliba said her posts were meant to be critical but not hateful. “It’s honestly really hurtful to see that I’m being called antisemitic,” she told USA TODAY. “Especially since I’ve been dealing with this grief and it’s been my Jewish friends that have provided me with so much love and support.”
But simply being on the blacklist wasn’t bad enough, says Saliba. She added that people soon found and posted her personal information online, including her cellphone number and her address. What followed was a campaign of legitimate hate, Saliba told USA Today, adding, “I get hundreds of death threats and rape threats.”
And Saliba is far from alone. Thomas Kinservik, a 22-year-old Yale University student has also been blacklisted by Canary Mission. Last spring, he was seen in a video laughing and cheering as an American flag was lowered from a flagpole. In the background of the video, students chant “Viva, viva Palestina.”
Soon after, a profile emerged of him on Canary Mission’s website, accusing him of “spreading hatred of America and Israel at Yale.” He told USA Today that he now fears for his future and his job prospects.
Egyptian-American student Layla Sayed also recounts her experience with Canary Mission. Soon after attending a pro-Palestinian demonstration last May, a friend told her that she had been added to Canary Mission’s website.
She told Reuters that when she visited Canary Mission, she found a photo from the October 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.
The website also posted a photo of her on its X and Instagram accounts labelled her as ‘Hamas War Crimes Apologist’. “My initial reaction was just absolute shock,” 20-year-old Sayed 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.”
Others who are profiled on Canary Mission also revealed that they now struggle with feelings of anxiety and paranoia and in a few cases, also have to contend with death threats. According to them, the blacklist has become especially frightening since it’s being used by law enforcement in Israel and the United States.
Some activists note that Canary Mission doesn’t just stop at their online activities, and the harassment even bleeds into the offline world. At George Washington University in 2018, two powerful men in yellow canary outfits suddenly turned up in the lobby of the campus building and engaged in a strange and frightening dance, reports T_he Nation_. 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.”
Others note that Canary Mission has led people to quiet their support of Palestinian rights. As Rani al-Hindi, who was a member of Palestine activist groups at Hunter College in New York, told The Intercept, “It’s killing the student movement. We’re not able to organise any big actions, have any big events, organise for the divestment campaign that has launched. There is a lot of intimidation.”
Can anything be done against Canary Mission?
Unfortunately, as of now, students claim they are helpless against Canary Mission. Legal experts have told Reuters that much of what Canary Mission publishes is protected by the US Constitution’s First Amendment on free speech.
Meanwhile, experts have demanded that college and university leaders educate themselves about Canary Mission and its record of subjecting students and faculty to vicious and underhanded attacks because such attacks threaten the well-being of students and faculty and the integrity of the college community.
As Bill Mullen, a professor of American studies at Purdue University and a creator of Against Canary Mission, told The Intercept, “It is the most significant and effective of pro-Israel groups at intimidating activists. This is because it is omnipresent, on the web, 24/7, virile, and constantly reproducing and updating its results.”
With inputs from agencies
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