A wave of McCarthyism go back over USA mounted in the war unleashed on the Gaza Strip. Students and teachers who support the cause of Palestine from universities, in addition to being repressed and detained, are denounced for anti-Semitism on a digital site that stores their personal data and academic profiles. Is called Canary Mission (Misión Canaria), emerged in 2014 and according to investigative journalist James Bamford, from The Nation Its purpose is “to persecute and censor students, teachers and, in general terms, anyone who disagrees with the Government of Israel or expresses themselves in favor of Palestine.”
With almost a thousand students and teachers arrested on the campuses of several US universities, the student movement He is also demonized in the virtual world. The context that is being experienced refers to the protests in the ’60s against the Vietnam War, and even before, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s blacklists circulated in the ’50s. Accused of being anti-Semitic for demonstrating against the crimes that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is committing in Gaza, the young people who peacefully took over facilities in their places of study were exposed to persecution by Misión Canaria.
The makers of this website note that their task is to portray “individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the United States, Israel, and Jews on college campuses in North America and beyond.” Additionally, the page reports that it “investigates hate across the political spectrum, including far-right, far-left, and anti-Israel activists.”
In the series of articles he published for The Nation journalist Bamford wonders who finances Canary Mission. Their conclusion is that they are American billionaires with close ties to the Jewish state. In an article published on December 22, 2023, he describes that that organization is dedicated to “a massive blacklisting and doxxing operation directed from Israel that targets students and teachers critical of Israeli policies, and then makes accusations.” defamatory accusations against them, accusations designed to embarrass and humiliate them and damage their future employability. All secretly funded by wealthy Jewish Americans and American Jewish foundations.”
“Censorship and surveillance”
Iklil Bouhmouch, a student at Georgetown University, commented that she had been included in the page that publishes profiles of students and professors critical of the genocide in Gaza that the International Criminal Court is investigating. and that Israel rejects as a definition of its policy: “Censorship and surveillance is everywhere, which is why many people have to cover their faces. I myself am already in Canary Mision… They try to show us in a negative way and that happens both on the internet and in real life.”
With surgical precision, Bamford described in his article the cases and names of several students or teachers who suffered the consequences of being included in the McCarthyist website. As a result of what he called “an error on a tax form a few years ago,” he discovered that a California billionaire, Sanford Diller, was financing the website. The real estate businessman who died in 2018 was also a donor to Donald Trump and supported “a long list of Islamophobic organizations.”
After Hamas entered Israel on October 7 last year and killed and took civilians hostage on the Gaza border, members of Harvard University’s Palestine Solidarity Committee condemned the Hamas government’s policy in a public letter. Netanyahu and recalled that “over the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison.”
The response was a scuffle with a van that circulated near the University and that carried signs with the names and photographs of the students who had signed the letter. “Harvard’s leading anti-Semites,” said one of them. The news was published in The Harvard Crimsonthe student period that has been published since 1873.
The academic community that is mobilizing in the US against the crimes of the Netanyahu government in Gaza calls for a ceasefire and freedom for the Palestinian people. But it also demands that its study centers end the economic ties they maintain with Israel. Quoted by the BBC Mundo network, a student at UCLA in California who did not give his name for fear of reprisals, explained: “What we ask is that the university stop investing funds in those who profit from the genocide in Gaza. And we’re not going to leave until we get it.” The same thing happens at Harvard. A group of students continues camping on campus and gave the University authorities until this Monday to divest if they have funds or shares in Israeli companies.
In the United States, the war waged by the Netanyahu regime in Gaza caused Israel to lose support, especially among younger sectors. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based think tank, found in the first week of April that “a third of adults under 30 say their sympathies are wholly or mainly with the Palestinian people, while 14% maintain that their sympathies are wholly or mainly with the Israeli people. The rest say they sympathize equally with both, with neither, or that they are not sure.” 3,600 people were consulted.
The situation that compromises the support of the young electorate for President Joe Biden for his re-election, It gets worse every day because of its unrestricted support for Israel. The young students, the vanguard of the protests against the war in Gaza, became an easy target for the American political establishment. In that there are no contradictions between Republicans and Democrats. The House of Representatives has just passed a bill that expands the federal definition of the concept of anti-Semitism. Congressmen from both parties used the proposal of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Among those opposed was Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving Jewish congressman and defender of Israel. In this regard, he commented: “This bill threatens to restrict freedom of expression protected by the Constitution. Speech critical of Israel alone does not constitute discrimination. “The bill is too broad.”
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