Owner of ‘Malicious, McCarthyite’ Website That Doxxes Palestinian Activists ID'd

The owner of a website that doxxes pro-Palestinian activists and supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been identified as American lawyer Howard David Sterling by journalist and author Max Blumenthal.
Sputnik

The website, Canary Mission, has an impressive catalogue of deep dives into the personal lives of American activists who have called out the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the county's abuses of human rights.

One student, Blumenthal told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, was even pulled from class and "interrogated by the FBI as a result of social media posts he made that appeared on Canary Mission."

"What we discovered, basically through documents passed to us, is that the person who registered Canary Mission's website… in February 2015, is an American lawyer who has been very involved in advocacy for Israel, who is involved in high tech and medicine in Israel, named Howard David Sterling," Blumenthal said.

"Ever since Canary Mission emerged in 2015, the website has maintained total anonymity, and that has given it impunity to smear and blacklist literally hundreds of students and Palestine solidarity activists, posting their personal information," Blumenthal said, adding that the website is notorious for "spinning statements that those students made on social media with the express intent of denying those students employment after college or getting them interrogated when they attempt to visit family inside of Palestine."

"What's significant about it is that we finally have a name connected to the website," he said.

Osama Alkhawaja, a student at the University of Chicago, tweeted on Wednesday that he just wants Sterling to "know that he's fighting a losing battle, and a free Palestine is inevitable." Alkhawaja said that he and his friends have been harassed by the website.

The website has doxxed students for comments as benign as "progressivism and feminism are irreconcilable with Zionism," just 12 hours prior to this article's publishing.

Blumenthal told Loud & Clear host Brian Becker and Sputnik News' Nicole Roussell, who was filling in for John Kiriakou, that he had contacted a family member of Sterling's. They denied that he owned the website, "but when I confronted the family member with the fact that the registration form is tied to his name and address, the family member said they just don't know how it could have happened," he said. 

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"I don't know how it happened, because I actually do know who the operational players are at Canary Mission, and I'm not at liberty to reveal it," Blumenthal added. "There is a network that I think goes all the way to Israeli intelligence which is behind this website."

"I think that this could possibly open up some opportunities for students who have been blacklisted on this website to seek accountability," Blumenthal said. "I think for the first time we're going to start seeing some accountability for this malicious, McCarthyite blacklisting site."

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