WASHINGTON - 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.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.
"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." 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.
Messages reviewed by Reuters called for their deportation or expulsion from school or suggested they should be raped or killed. The U.S. 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.
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 U.S. Constitution's First Amendment on free speech, three lawyers told Reuters. Cowland said the site was established in 2015 to counter rising antisemitism on college campuses. He did not answer questions about its leadership and funding. A 2016 tax filing by a prominent Jewish American philanthropic organization, the Helen Diller Family Foundation, revealed a financial link between Canary Mission and an Israeli non-profit called Megamot Shalom.
The university is one of several elite campuses that have been at the center of unrest over the Gaza war. Its former president, Liz Magill, resigned in December after coming under fire for her handling of accusations of antisemitism on campus.
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