When Canary Mission, the pro-Israel “blacklist” group, turned its sights on the University of Pennsylvania, it didn’t just perform its usual work of compiling dossiers on students, professors, and campus organizations.
Instead, Penn merited greater attention: Canary Mission produced a highly produced report — one of several dozen “campaigns” the blacklist group has put together since the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel.
“UPenn’s problem with campus antisemitism gained international attention following the brutal Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023,” Canary Mission, which purports to expose anti-American, anti-Israel, and antisemitic bias, wrote on its page about Penn. “UPenn, along with a number of other prominent Ivy League schools, has been a bastion of SUPPORT for Hamas.”
Canary Mission, whose profiles are reportedly being used by U.S. immigration authorities to target pro-Palestine activists, urges its readers to action on Penn by listing the email and phone number for the school’s interim president, J. Larry Jameson. The page goes on to lay out a vast anti-Israel conspiracy.
Unbeknownst to most of the University of Pennsylvania community, however, the call was coming from inside the house.
A foundation tied to the spouse of a Penn trustee is among a small group of publicly known donors to the secretive Canary Mission.
According to a tax document, the Israel-based Canary Mission received $100,000 in 2023 from the Natan and Lidia Peisach Family Foundation, whose treasurer is Jaime Peisach, the husband of Penn trustee Cheryl Peisach. (Cheryl Peisach, Jaime Peisach, and Penn did not respond to requests for comment.)
“It’s profoundly inappropriate for a trustee’s spouse to engage in that sort of activity.”
For some members of the Penn community, the Peisach family’s support for Canary Mission — whose online dossiers alleging antisemitism, often compiled with thin evidence, have been criticized as cyberbullying — raises questions about their commitment to the school’s well-being and academic freedom.
“It’s profoundly inappropriate for a trustee’s spouse to engage in that sort of activity,” said Anne Norton, a political science professor at Penn.
“I’d ask if someone is doing harm to the university fundraising, to the work of the faculty, to the students — for such a person to do this,” Norton said, “is reprehensible.”
The Peisach family, whose patriarch Natan made a fortune from textile and cut flowers companies, are funders of a bevy of right-wing pro-Israel causes and have donated prodigiously to Penn. According to tax filings, the family foundation has given more than a million dollars in the last five years to the university.
Canary Gathers Dirt
Canary Mission’s main work is a roster of thousands of dossiers on what it considers to be antisemitic and anti-Israel activists, whether in academia, entertainment, or any other field. The site publishes its targets’ photos, names, and affiliations alongside what it purports to be their antisemitic statements.
Effectively a “blacklist” of Palestine solidarity activists, the Canary Mission’s dossiers are now reportedly being used to target immigrants and travelers to the U.S. caught up in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
While the far-right pro-Israel group Betar has said it passed names of noncitizen pro-Palestine activists to the Trump administration, Canary Mission has said only that it lists its dossiers online.
The site has long been accused of cyberbullying — giving a road map for pro-Israel online mobs to dox and harass supporters of Palestinian rights. Last year, Reuters reported that students and a scholar targeted by Canary Mission subsequently received online messages calling for their expulsion, deportation, rapes, and killings.
Even before the October 7 attacks took pro-Israel doxing to new heights, the group was drawing sharp criticisms from academia.
“Canary Mission is an extremist website that declares that its purpose is to document ‘people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,’” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law, wrote in a June 2023 open letter. “I condemn this targeting of particular students because of their speech with the goal of harming their employment opportunities.”
Canary Mission’s dossiers frequently cover low-level activists based on thin material — much of which, critics allege, conflates criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. Many of the activists named by the Canary Mission have done little more than make innocuous pro-Palestinian social media posts or attended protests, only to be attacked as antisemites in Canary posts that quickly become the most prominent Google search result for their names.
Those targeted by Canary Mission have few means of recourse. According to Reuters, lawyers told one student targeted by the group that, because Canary Mission is not registered in the U.S., there was little hope for a lawsuit against the group. Canary Mission itself maintains an “Ex-Canary” page for formerly listed people who it says have renounced antisemitism, though the site offers no transparency on how to become delisted.
“Due to a fear of harassment, Ex-Canaries’ identities may be removed,” the page says. “For inquiries about becoming an Ex-Canary, please visit the Contact Us page.”
The contact page reads only “Down for maintenance.”
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