When the shadowy pro-Israel group Canary Mission sets its sights on someone, its goal is clear.
The blacklist site launched in 2015 with the expressed aim of preventing pro-Palestinian student activists from getting jobs after college.
Its launch video was a blatant call to action for employers across North America.
"Today, college campuses are filled with antisemitic, anti-American radicals, waving Palestinian flags and placards," a voice can be heard saying.
"A few years later, these individuals are applying for jobs within your company … It is your duty to ensure that today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees."
A decade on, the site has created hundreds of dossiers on students, professors, health professionals and organisations, accusing them of promoting "hatred of the US, Israel and Jews" on college campuses.
While the site has profiled some Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, many dossiers have targeted people for simply supporting Palestine or criticising Israeli policy.
It has published their names, photos, workplace and education information — including college majors, and links to their social media pages — labelling their activism "antisemitic" or "terrorism".
The group is not alone in its mission to silence and punish criticism of Israel — in fact it operates as part of a larger ecosystem.
However, while many of Australia's pro-Israel lobby groups operate discreetly and persistently behind the scenes, Canary Mission wants the world to know exactly what its intentions are.
A 'nefarious and McCarthyist enterprise'
As one of the many targets of Canary Mission, Andrew Ross, a professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU), said the site has been successful in promulgating fear on campuses.
"No matter what you have achieved in your life, if you're publicly critical of Israeli policy you're going to be attacked, pulled into disrepute, and efforts will be made to have you either fired from your position or blocked from employment channels," Professor Ross said.
His profile on Canary Mission detailed his support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), his arrest at NYU after joining a university sit-in, and what was labelled as his "hatred of Israel" — citing his solidarity with student protesters.
The site's tactics have often been compared to McCarthyism in the 1950s — when individuals were targeted, blacklisted, publicly humiliated or lost their jobs if they were deemed to have communist ties or sympathies.
He said appearing on the "nefarious and McCarthyist enterprise" has amplified harassment and death threats against him and his family.
"It's a doxxing resource … used as ammunition to disparage you, to harass you, to endanger your professional life and worse."
While pro-Israel lobbying is not a radically new methodology, Alex Kane — senior reporter at Jewish Currents — said it was the first of its kind and its "poorly sourced" dossiers "ruin people's lives".
"What made Canary Mission so unique is the leveraging of the internet to create webs of suspicion around people … when all they're doing is advocating for the human rights of Palestinians."
The site also includes an "ex-canary" ritual, where those who have been profiled can only have their name removed if they appear to repent by writing a public apology.
ICE uses Canary Mission to target students
The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration earlier this year saw hundreds detained and deported.
In January, Canary Mission targeted student-activist Mahmoud Khalil, a negotiator and spokesperson for pro-Palestinian protests at New York's Columbia University.
The lengthy dossier included screenshots of Mr Khalil at protests, several excerpts of slogans he chanted or speeches he made, and his participation in the Columbia University Apartheid Divest student coalition.
Soon after, far-right Zionist group Betar US posted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was aware of his "home address and whereabouts".
By March, officers with ICE Homeland Security Investigations arrested Mr Khalil without a warrant.
That same month, Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk — a student at Tufts University in Massachusetts — was detained by six plain-clothes US federal officers.
It came a year after Canary Mission published the 30-year-old's personal details when she co-authored an op-ed in The Tufts Daily calling for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Canary Mission took credit for Ms Ozturk's arrest, labelling the dossier "the primary cause".
Months later, a federal judge ruled Mr Khalil's detention unconstitutional, and Ms Ozturk was released on bail without restrictions after a judge stated there was no evidence presented to support her detention.
During the trial of the Trump administration's deportation policy last month, a senior official within ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division confirmed "most" names of student protesters it was asked to investigate were pulled from Canary Mission and Betar US.
Quincy Institute senior adviser and investigative journalist for Responsible Statecraft, Eli Clifton said Canary Mission's relevance and impact has increased since its inception.
"While there's certainly been loads of attempts to stifle free speech in the United States, this is an odd one where actually the goal is to stifle free speech about a country 6,000 miles away and about US foreign policy towards that country," he said.
Canary Mission has been contacted for comment.
Unprecedented suppression of speech
Last year, Heidi Matthews — an assistant professor of law at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University — found her Canary Mission profile alongside other academics from Canada.
After working on international criminal law for almost two decades, she said the suppression of speech and academic freedom she was now facing was unprecedented.
"The purpose is to control public discourse … and to have that conversation only in the terms dictated by the State of Israel," Professor Matthews said.
Canary Mission cited her support for the BDS movement and student encampments, and accused her of demonising Israel.
"Statements I've made have been constructed by Canary Mission as justifying armed resistance that targets civilians, when in fact there's just no universe in which any kind of legitimate resistance would encompass that kind of international criminality," she said.
Professor Matthews said the site followed the script of other defamatory smear campaigns.
"I don't feel the need to defend myself against organisations who operate emphatically in bad faith, not on the basis of facts and on the basis of very well-funded and organised political motivation," she said.
She said academic institutions have failed to support faculty members, including through "scholarship harassment" — when people are targeted for research they do that is incompatible with certain political views.
Pro-Palestinian students and faculty have also been the target of a plan called Project Esther — launched by conservative Washington-based think tank Heritage Foundation — aimed at suppressing the movement, including protests within schools and universities across the US.
The think tank is known for spearheading Project 2025 — a policy guide for President Donald Trump's second term that sought to reshape the federal government.
In what it said was a plan to fight antisemitism, it branded critics of Israel "a terrorist support network" — calling for them to be deported, sued, expelled and fired.
Who is behind the shadowy site?
Unlike the people it profiles on its site, Canary Mission has gone to great lengths to keep its own members anonymous.
Its web domain shows it uses a proxy company to hide its IP address and ownership.
While Canary Mission accepts non-tax deductible donations through the site, there is no group by that name registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — the revenue service for the US federal government.
The site does not appear to have a fiscal sponsor either, which is a nonprofit that helps smaller or unregistered projects accept donations legally and provides financial oversight.
In 2018, The Forward reported on a tax filing from a Jewish-American philanthropic organisation showing a $US100,000 donation to the Central Fund of Israel which was designated for "Canary Mission for Megamot Shalom".
Megamot Shalom is a mysterious Israeli-based non-profit with minimal online presence, and no spokesperson.
The Central Fund of Israel facilitates US tax-deductible donations to right-wing Israeli charities and channels money to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The Forward also said that a British-born Jerusalem resident was in charge of the site.
Expectations 'battle' will recommence
The Israeli government has been contacted for comment.
A tax document from 2023 showed a Florida-based family foundation gave Canary Mission $US100,000, and listed that it was going to Israel.
In a report for The Intercept, Eli Clifton found that the treasurer of the Natan and Lidia Peisach Family Foundation — which made the donation — was the husband of University of Pennsylvania trustee Cheryl Peisach.
Canary Mission has dedicated an entire section of its site to targeting the University of Pennsylvania, its faculty and student body, claiming a "rising tide of antisemitism".
Mr Clifton said it shows how "ugly" the debate on college campuses had become — both about Israel and free speech.
"It's pretty inappropriate to have somebody who sits as a trustee of this organisation … funding the very attacks on this institution at a time when the Trump administration is threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of funding from universities," Mr Clifton said.
The University of Pennsylvania, Cheryl Peisach and her husband Jaime have been contacted for comment.
As US colleges head into the new academic year, Mr Ross said he expects the "battle" to recommence — and he's looking forward to the fight.
"This current generation of students has been so brave and bold," he said.
"Even though they're being repressed and there's a crackdown upon them, they will not stop."
