Columbia University. (Shutterstock) (Shutterstock)
Columbia University

The Canary Mission, a secretive pro-Israel organization that documents anti-Israel campus activity last week released a detailed report on Columbia University, just as the school’s annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” was set to kick off.

A clandestine organization that documents anti-Israel campus activity last week released a detailed report on Columbia University, just as the school’s annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” was set to kick off. The report was produced in response to “numerous student requests that we urgently investigate … radical anti-Israel activity,” Canary Mission’s press release stated, claiming that “Columbia University has become a hotbed of hate, serving as a home for extreme anti-Israel and anti-American groups.”

Canary Mission’s report profiled thirty-nine of the major campus activists over the past several years, including students and professors. Many of these individuals, it noted, belong to groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

One undergraduate profiled, for example, is a member of both SJP and the Muslim Student Association. According to the report, she has worked to bring speakers to campus who sided with Palestinian terrorists; rejected the designation “terrorist” applied to a person convicted in US Federal Court of responsibility for deadly bombings in Israel; helped construct the mock “apartheid” wall on campus during “Israeli Apartheid Week;” and publicly denied that Jews have the right to define Judaism and Zionism for themselves.

A graduate student profiled, also a member of SJP, played “an integral part” in “Columbia’s [recent] Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign,” called “Columbia University Apartheid Divest,” as reported in The Algemeiner in early February. The report also noted that he has led teaching workshops promoting BDS, regularly promotes social media links from the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada and openly supports violent Palestinian uprisings against Israelis, commonly knows as “intifadas.”

Of the eight professors profiled, among the most well-known is Joseph Massad, professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History. The Canary Mission report documents his ongoing anti-Israel research and teaching, including a 2013 essay published by Al Jazeera, titled “The Last of the Semites,” which prominent journalist Jeffrey Goldberg described as “one of the most anti-Jewish screeds in recent history.”

Last year, Columbia topped a list of universities “with the most antisemitic activity.” Its annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” commenced Monday with a panel discussion promoting the academic boycott of Israel.

Canary Mission was founded in 2015, according to its website, “to document the people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college campuses in North America.” It maintains a high degree of secrecy about its members and operations.

By: Andrew Pessin/The Algemeiner