Fifteen civil rights groups and seven individuals filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, claiming the Jewish group violated their civil and privacy rights by spying on their activities. The lawsuit, based in large part on facts that have emerged in a criminal probe of the ADL in San Francisco, not only pits Arab-American groups against the ADL, but several other civil rights groups representing African Americans, Latinos and Jews, as well as various social causes such as the anti-apartheid movement and those opposed to police abuse.
Since it first registered its website in February 2015, Canary Mission has been a source of mystery and menace. Dedicated to blacklisting students involved in Palestine solidarity activism, intimidating them and denigrating their public reputations, Canary Mission’s administrators have gone to great lengths to conceal their identities. The secrecy has enabled them to target legally defenseless students – who are mostly members of minority and immigrant groups — with total impunity.
The rejection of Ethiopian-Israelis’ Jewish identities is antithetical to Israeli thinking of the past 40 years, including that of Israel’s leading rabbis.
