<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/22/meet-the-owner-of-canary-missions-anonymous-anti-palestinian-blacklisting-website/">https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/22/meet-the-owner-of-canary-missions-anonymous-anti-palestinian-blacklisting-website/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Meet the Owner of Canary Mission's
Anonymous Anti-Palestinian Blacklisting Website</h1>
August 22, 2018</div>
<hr>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4" style="display:
block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div>
<h4>Canary Mission has exploited its anonymity to smear
college students with impunity. The Grayzone has
obtained documents identifying the owner of the
malicious anti-Palestinian organization’s web domain.</h4>
<h4>By Hamzah Raza and Max Blumenthal</h4>
<p><span>Since it first registered its website in February
2015, <a
href="https://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/modern-day-mccarthyists-are-going-extremes-slime-activists-fighting-israels">Canary
Mission</a> has been a source of mystery and menace.
Dedicated to blacklisting students involved in
Palestine solidarity activism, intimidating them and
denigrating their public reputations, Canary Mission’s
administrators have gone to great lengths to conceal
their identities. The secrecy has enabled them to
target legally defenseless students – who are mostly
members of minority and immigrant groups — with total
impunity. </span></p>
<p><span>Now, the Grayzone can identify a key figure
behind the malicious blacklisting operation. He is the
owner of Canary Mission’s domain name and a wealthy
lawyer who is a fervent supporter of Israel. According
to documents provided to the Grayzone, his name is
Howard David Sterling.</span></p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="848"
data-permalink="https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/22/meet-the-owner-of-canary-missions-anonymous-anti-palestinian-blacklisting-website/fullsizerender/"
data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/grayzoneproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FullSizeRender.jpg?fit=1098%2C1280&ssl=1"
data-orig-size="1098,1280" data-comments-opened="0"
data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}"
data-image-title="FullSizeRender"
data-image-description=""
data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/grayzoneproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FullSizeRender.jpg?fit=257%2C300&ssl=1"
data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/grayzoneproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FullSizeRender.jpg?fit=845%2C986&ssl=1"
src="https://i0.wp.com/grayzoneproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FullSizeRender.jpg?resize=580%2C676&ssl=1"
alt="" height="567" width="487"></p>
<p><span>Sterling has said that it his life’s mission to
increase foreign investment in Israeli healthcare
companies. Having worked extensively in Israel’s
medical and hi-tech sector, he sees investment in the
country as a means of ensuring American support for
Israel. He has published several <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQEQVEKzEO8&featur=">videos</a>
on YouTube highlighting what he sees as Israel’s
“impossible” medical breakthroughs.</span></p>
<p><span>In an interview with the Jewish National Fund’s
IsraelCast, Sterling </span><a
href="https://player.fm/series/israelcast/ceo-of-the-sterling-group-intl-howard-sterling"><span>stated</span></a><span>
that, “People will protect their pocket books. And if
they have shares in Israeli companies, they are going
to want to protect their pocket books by protecting
Israel.” </span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>Other major Israel lobby operatives
featured on the JNF’s podcast include Jacob Baime, who
is </span><span>Executive Director of the Israel on
Campus Coalition (ICC). Adam Milstein, a
California-based Israeli-American hedge fund director
who is among the top funders of the ICC, sits on
Baime’s board of directors. </span></p>
<p><span>Josh Nathan Kazis, a correspondent for the Jewish
Daily Forward, </span><a
href="https://forward.com/news/407127/a-new-wave-of-hardline-anti-bds-tactics-are-targeting-students-and-no-one-knows-who-s-behind-it/"><span>reported</span></a><span>
that the ICC’s Baime hired a professional consultant
to battle a divestment resolution at Ohio State just a
month after Canary Mission registered its website. It
was the first known instance of the Israel lobby
hiring political professionals to battle the BDS
(boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement on
campus.</span></p>
<p><span>Two months later, the Israeli government
appointed Gilad Erdan as Minister of Strategic
Affairs, transforming the outfit into the
military-intelligence apparatus’s main base of
operations against the global BDS movement.</span></p>
<p>Sterling is a previously unknown figure whose ties to
the ICC and other pro-Israel organizations are not
firmly established. And that might be why Canary
Mission’s website, which thrives off of anonymity, is
registered under his name.</p>
<p>Calls by the Grayzone to the phone number associated
with Sterling’s registration form were not answered.</p>
<p><strong>The Israel on Campus Coalition supports Canary
Mission</strong></p>
<p><span>The Sterling-owned Canary Mission website has had
such an inflammatory effect that it generated
controversy even within Zionist circles. The American
Jewish Congress has </span><a
href="https://forward.com/news/407127/a-new-wave-of-hardline-anti-bds-tactics-are-targeting-students-and-no-one-knows-who-s-behind-it/"><span>condemned</span></a><span>
the organization, while the Anti-Defamation League
backed away after initially issuing support, </span><a
href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/399850/adl-backtracks-on-islamophobic-and-racist-canary-mission/"><span>referring</span></a><span>
to Canary Mission as “Islamophobic and racist.” </span><span><br>
</span></p>
<p><span>But the ICC has consistently stood by Canary
Mission. The ICC brings together some of the lobby’s
most hardline organizations, from the Zionist
Organization of America to the David Project to the
right-wing Christians United for Israel. </span></p>
<p><span>The ICC’s 2016-2017 annual report </span><a
href="https://israelcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-Year-End-Report.pdf"><span>endorsed</span></a><span>
Canary Mission, referring to it as a “strong deterrent
against anti-Semitism and BDS activism.” Baime, the
Executive Director of the ICC, has been an avid </span><a
href="https://forward.com/news/407127/a-new-wave-of-hardline-anti-bds-tactics-are-targeting-students-and-no-one-knows-who-s-behind-it/"><span>defender</span></a><span>
of Canary Mission. </span></p>
<p><span>Sources who have viewed an unreleased Al Jazeera
investigative documentary series about the Israel
lobby have told the Grayzone that the series
identifies the operatives who conceived and today
direct Canary Mission. Al Jazeera has refused to air
the documentary since falling under pressure from the
lobby and its supporters in Congress.</span></p>
<p><strong>Canary Mission triggers FBI interrogation,
campus-wide surveillance</strong></p>
<p><span>Since its advent in 2015, Canary Mission has been
one of the most pernicious weapons of the Israel
lobby. </span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>Today, the Sterling-owned website contains
profiles of nearly 2000 students and over 500 college
professors considered enemies of Israel. The site was
created with the stated aim to expose those who
“promote lies and attacks on Israel and the Jewish
people” so that “</span><span>the public is better
informed.“</span></p>
<p><span>In practice, this means that those who overly
support the Palestinian cause are publicly defamed
through the publication of personal dossiers
containing inaccurate, misrepresented, and/or out-of
context statements. By raising the stakes of
Palestinian solidarity activism, the website intends
to act as a deterrent to students considering
Palestinian solidarity activism — particularly those
from marginalized communities like immigrants and
people of color.</span></p>
<p><span>The case of a Palestinian-American law student
named </span><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/06/24/students-for-justice-in-palestine-fbi-sjp/"><span>Ahmad
Aburas</span></a><span> provides a particularly
disturbing portrait of Canary Mission tactics in
action. While Aburas was enrolled at Seton Hall Law
School, Canary Mission contacted school administrators
to suggest that statements he made on social media
expressed support for terrorism. Seton Hall then
called the FBI, Aburas was taken out of class and
subjected to interrogation by federal agents over his
political views. </span></p>
<p><span>One Facebook status that Canary Mission singled
out related to Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza, where
Israel killed 551 Palestinian children in Gaza and
destroyed some 100,000 homes.</span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>Amid the atmosphere of despair, Aburas took
to Facebook to declare, “</span><span>We are all
RESISTANCE ! We are all #hamas ! We are all HUMAN.” </span></p>
<p><span>Aburas maintained that he was challenging the
Israeli propaganda that targets every Palestinian as a
member of Hamas, not expressing any ideological
affinity with the organization or its military
resistance. Yet none of this mattered to Canary
Mission, which branded him as a terrorist sympathizer
and deliberately triggered his FBI interrogation. </span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>“Canary Mission is an alt-right Zionist
website created to put an end to Palestinian political
opinions. Through false information and hostile
tactics, Canary Mission intimidates pro-Palestinian
organizers and activists,” Aburas said. </span><span><br>
</span></p>
<p><span>A co-author of this investigation, Hamzah Raza,
also experienced the Israel lobby’s culture of
intimidation while part of Vanderbilt’s Students for
Justice in Palestine chapter. There were multiple
occasions when members of the David Project, an
affiliate of the ICC, inquired about the student
organization’s budget, took notes on laptops at the
back of meetings, and even attempted to record its
events. </span><span><br>
</span><span><br>
</span><span>When Canary Mission created a profile on
Raza, he was shocked at the level that the Israel
lobby’s intimidation tactics had gone to. The website
compiled 67 images of him and stated that he
“supported terrorists, demonized Israel, and spread
anti-Israel propaganda.” </span></p>
<p><span>Anonymity has allowed Canary Mission to carry out
its McCarthyite tactics with impunity. But as this
Grayzone investigation demonstrates, members of this
high-tech goon squad can not hide their faces forever.
Accountability is coming.</span></p>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>