My son is on a list
And then they came for me. What does it say about us when we tell our own to repent or suffer the consequences?
Before Wednesday, I had never heard of the shadowy organization known as The Canary Mission. But then they came for my son.
What I’ve learned since then has sent me into a deep hole with concern not only for my son, but our freedoms and yes, even our future as a Jewish people.
It started with a message from my son’s father, alerting me to an Instagram post. There was my boy, in a picture I remember, pasted into a template made to look like a “wanted” poster. It lists the Canary Mission’s grievances. Some are accurate; others are not. By the time I saw it, over a couple of hundred people had liked the post or commented on him. They know his name, they know where he goes to school. By the comments, they seem to know me.
Some of the comments threaten violence against him. Others, before I flagged them, threatened sexual violence against his girlfriend. On the surface, this is an organization with a stated interest to combat antisemitism and yet, here they are inciting hatred and violence.
From their mission statement:
Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.
Canary Mission is motivated by a desire to combat the rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses. We pursue our mission by presenting the words and deeds of individuals and organizations that engage in anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry on the far right, far left and among the array of organizations that comprise the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Canary Mission gathers content from publicly available sources. Additionally, we collect and validate materials submitted privately through our website. We aggregate this information into a concise and easily searchable format, providing free access to the general public.
Before publication, all content is verified, meeting our high standards of accuracy and authenticity.
Information is submitted, meaning someone may have “reported” my son. As for verification — no one spoke to him or asked for an interview. He is part of a Marxist group on campus. He is not pro-Hamas. He is not even pro-BDS. The Canary Mission post tops Google’s results when you search his name. According to a Reuters story, they intend to top Google searches and the posts always draw hundreds of comments.
Yet to get off this list, individuals must repent, and declare their allegiance to Israel. Even then, are you ever really off a list that threatens to inform potential employers about your political views? The information is also shared with the Israeli government, and can prevent you from ever entering the country.
I intended to travel to Israel when the war ended, to continue my research at Yad Vashem. But now, I’m not so sure.
Various news reports link the Canary Mission to an Israeli nonprofit called Megamot Shalom. According to Reuters, the nonprofit is registered to an address southwest of Jerusalem but when they visited, they found a locked one-story building with no sign of activity.
Ha’aetz points to Jonathan Bash as the head of Megamot. Ben Packer, an American-born rabbi who is known to be a supporter of Meir Kahane, is listed as a shareholder. If you aren’t familiar with Kahane (or his Kach party), he was an ultranationalist, fundamentalist rabbi who was convicted of terrorism before he was assassinated.
Make no mistake: this is a McCarthyite blacklist. And my son is far from the only Jew on the list. Am I the last person on earth that still naively believes we can engage in open dialogue rather than threats?
A few months ago, an article in The New Republic questioned if we were sliding towards McCarthyism. It opened with the reminder that at the height of McCarthyism, Jewish councils threw out the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, a subsidiary of the International Workers Order. At the time, mainstream Jewish groups, afraid of being targeted, turned over groups deemed communist to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
While there are differences, the article posits that once again, mainstream Jewish organizations are defining the borders of “acceptable American Jewish political belief, this time casting Jewish groups and individuals questioning Zionism as being on the outside.”
I’m sorry I didn’t pay much attention earlier to the many who were victimized by this doxxing but I am now and by “outing” our own and threatening violence against them, we are going down a terrible path, my tribe.
The top picture, of Brezhnev and Honecker kissing is titled, “My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love.” That’s how I feel right now. I love my Jewish identity and the Jewish people. But most of all, I love my son.
I’m sorry to hear this. How scary for all of you. Here we have an organization called “The Mapping Project” that looks to document any pro-Israel companies and institutions and call out their offenses. It’s truly heinous. It’s one step from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” The other day some kids were standing on our lawn and taking a picture of our “we stand with Israel” sign and when my husband asked them what they were doing they said, “oh we were just curious”
This is horrifying. I’m so sorry. During my time as a senior Reuters editor, a similar organization denounced me publicly and called me a “self-hating Jew”. The bitter and complex mixture of emotions that slur awakened in this son of refugees on both sides of the family, who bears the name of a great-uncle killed on Kristallnacht, burns deeply. And yet … and yet. My values are my values. And they run deep too.