Protesters and counter-protesters at a Students for Justice in Palestine demonstration at Columbia University in Manhattan on Oct. 12.BING GUAN/The New York Times News Service
If you were to search for Dalida Alhaddad on the internet, you could be forgiven for wondering what kind of person she is. The second Google result for her name describes her as someone who “has spread incitement, expressed support for terrorists.”
She has, according to website Canary Mission, promoted hatred toward Israel. The site has published more than 2,000 words about Ms. Alhaddad, saying she recommended a book written by a terrorist and advocated to free a Palestinian man who has spent long periods in Israeli prison isolation after chasing a man through the streets of an Israeli settlement with a knife as a teenager.
Reading the Canary Mission posting won’t tell you anything about why Ms. Alhaddad, a 24-year-old student living in Ottawa, feels so strongly about Palestinian issues. She was born in Gaza, where she was in a grocery store when a bomb dropped on a man in a nearby car. “I saw his head laying somewhere and his legs somewhere else,” she said. “I had to walk between his body parts because I was trying to go home.”
She was six years old at the time.
Ms. Alhaddad had not heard of Canary Mission until she discovered her own listing in an internet search. The website, which launched in 2015 and has received funding from at least one prominent U.S. Jewish foundation, is devoted to documenting “individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.” It offers to remove people from its site only when they have “shown moral courage to recognize their earlier mistakes.”
The website’s thousands of postings of people who are students, professors and professionals are one window into the wide array of personal attacks that have become an international front in the continuing war in the Middle East. Often co-ordinated and launched through the internet, such attacks have roiled campuses and workplaces, as ideological foes seek to destroy careers and reputations.
Two-and-a-half-months after Israel launched a deadly war after the murderous Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, the online battles have shown little sign of abating.
“These doxing tactics, these intimidation tactics, these bullying tactics – trying to get people fired from their jobs, accusations of antisemitism, just harassment and intimidation – those tactics have been around. But they’ve gotten a lot more prevalent since Oct. 7. And also, to be honest, a lot more accepted,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, the former executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace and a consultant whose work includes working with organizations in Palestinian territories.
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Such pressure campaigns have led to lawyers being denied jobs, Hollywood actors being dropped by talent agencies and even a Santa Claus in Sag Harbor, N.Y., being told his services were no longer wanted. But nowhere have those campaigns been more intense than on campuses. Wealthy donors have withdrawn funding over antisemitism and university presidents have been dragged before Congress for questioning – with University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill subsequently resigning amid backlash to her testimony.
On campuses like Columbia University, student online discussions have grown toxic: “wish we had some way to indicate Zionists and the Zionist supporting shops … perhaps with a star of David,” one person wrote on Sidechat, an app that allows people at universities to connect with fellow students through anonymous posts, according to a screenshot obtained by The Globe and Mail.
One Columbia student, David Ben Naim, left his studies this summer to join The Israel Defence Forces, or IDF, the Israeli army. After Oct. 7, a person on Sidechat wrote: “I sincerely hope any IDF veterans here (and this includes David Ben Naim, currently “proudly” serving) die a slow death.”
Rebecca Massel is a senior staff writer with the Columbia Daily Spectator, the university’s student newspaper, and has interviewed more than 50 Jewish students. “A lot of them have been very affected by what’s been posted,” she said.
Ms. Massel helped report a story about an Israeli student assaulted with a stick in front of a university library in October. The incident attracted global headlines, and brought a deluge of criticism against Ms. Massel, who is Jewish herself. People questioned the accuracy of an account written by a Jewish person, even though the Spectator had confirmed its reporting by examining video, speaking with a bystander and interviewing police. (The accused assailant was later arrested and charged with a hate crime.)
Ms. Massel received enough threats that she briefly left campus. “I was shocked by the amount of backlash it received, and the aggressive tones that were taken online,” she said.
Across campus, internet and real-world conversations have fed each other, she said. Women have had their hijabs ripped off. A Jewish student wearing a yarmulke was sworn at in the kosher section of a dining hall.
“This is beyond something at a protest. This is, ‘I hate you because of who you are,’” Ms. Massel said.
Such rancour existed before Oct. 7. But the frequency and severity of attacks have increased. People have had their personal details published online in retaliation for comments that might otherwise have prompted little notice, said a representative of the Legal Centre for Palestine, a Canadian group. The Globe is not identifying the representative because they fear reprisals.
The organization now receives several reports a day from people seeking legal help. Some are students whose old internet posts have been reported to professional associations by people examining Internet histories of those who have expressed an opinion on the war. Others are more serious, like reports of fake profiles on social media and LinkedIn that mimic a person’s identity and then publish inflammatory statements that are falsely associated with that person.
LinkedIn did not respond to a request for comment.
For professionals, an internet report about their war views “can be extremely intimidating – it might be the only thing that comes up when people Google their names, and it could pose a real threat to their employability,” said Michael Bueckert, vice-president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
But Kareem Abuali, a cognitive science student at McGill University, questions whether the pervasiveness of such online efforts has also diminished their effectiveness. Mr. Abuali, a member of the group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, was among the more recent additions to the Canary Mission website, which accused him of spreading “hatred of Israel and Zionists.”
That post, however, yielded more messages of support than criticism, he said.
“The power of these smear campaigns is waning,” he said.
In a statement, Canary Mission said it is providing a service at a critical time.
“The world after Oct. 7 is dramatically different,” the organization said. “People are shocked, afraid and angry. Students, parents, employers and organizations all feel this way and are looking for ways to protect themselves from this wave of antisemitic hatred.”
Companies, too, Canary Mission said, want “ways to screen for antisemitic individuals.”
Ms. Alhaddad didn’t take the website’s post about her seriously until people began to recognize her at protests and at the grocery store. “They were like, ‘hey, you are Dalida from Canary Mission, right?’” she said. “That’s when I started to become a bit concerned.”
Ms. Alhaddad is studying for a bachelor’s degree in public safety at Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology. She also is a youth worker at the John Howard Society. She does not deny making the comments the website attributes to her, and when she saw what Canary Mission had written, she told her program co-ordinator and employer. “I wanted them to know the story from my own point of view – especially with the difference between being antisemitic and anti-Zionism,” she said.
She has gained followers on social media since the post. “I’ve been receiving lots of support from people who found me through the Canary Mission,” she said.
The online attention hasn’t muted her outspokenness. “To be born Gazan, it means that you are born with this big responsibility,” she said. It’s a duty, she believes, “to carry out the fight – and just fight for the freedom of Palestine, of the Palestinian children, women, and elders, and the freedom of the whole land itself.”