A US-based journalist recently accused me of being part of Canary Mission – a pro-Israel website that’s been doxxing pro-Palestinian student organizers for over a decade.
The only connection I’ve ever had to this organization was a highly critical piece by Aryeh Shapiro that I edited here at VISION in 2018.
It’s hard to imagine anyone who’s actually engaged with my ideas taking this accusation seriously.
The evidence presented for the allegations were:
1. The name “Yehuda HaKohen” on a list of employees for an Israeli-based organization believed to be a front group for Canary Mission.
2 .The fact that I’m Facebook friends with three other names on the list and have appeared with one of them together on a panel.
The journalist clearly doesn’t understand how common the name “Yehuda HaKohen” is in Israel. “Yehuda Cohen” (one letter different in Hebrew) is often said to be the generic Israeli equivalent to the name “John Smith” in the United States.
She also doesn’t appreciate how Jews who make aliya (ascend home to Israel) from English-speaking countries tend to have very few degrees of separation between one another. Especially if they’re involved in some form of political organizing.
The truth is that I probably have more Facebook friends who’ve been targeted by Canary Mission than friends who support it. But they may not be my friends for long if they buy into this accusation against me.
…and now you, Yehuda haKohen, are acquainted with someone else, in print only, who doesn’t think in the expected paradigm of those who look for enemies in the “anti-Palestinian” camp. My mother told me when I was little (approximately 4 years old) that we were Palestinian Jews. Her mother was born in Palestine in 1900, under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire, and left in 1920 to marry a Jew in New York City (as far as I can tell. She had passed away before I had any opportunity to meet her and receive the story.).
I just found a site that has an entire print copy and a typed one after it, of an article Golda Meir wrote about being misquoted about her stance on Palestinians: https://www.israellycool.com/2021/11/21/did-golda-meir-really-say-there-are-no-palestinians/. I hope you and readers will find this useful.