Pro-Israel Group That Attacked UPenn Was Funded by Family of UPenn Trustee

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 releases 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."

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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."

Shadowy Israel-Based Group

Little of how Canary Mission operates is publicly known. Its website doesn't say where the group is based - according to tax filings by U.S. nonprofits that have donated to Canary, it's in Israel - and lists no officials or employees.

Because it is not a registered U.S. nonprofit, Canary Mission doesn't disclose any information about its board members or employees.

In 2018, based on two anonymous sources, The Forward reported that Jonathan Bash, a British-born Jerusalem resident, had claimed in private conversations that he ran Canary Mission. (A later report also tied him to another Canary-linked Israeli group.) Bash had also worked with another group with apparent ties to Canary but denied in 2015 the groups were connected.

Few of the group's donors are publicly known.

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While some of its known donors are Jewish foundations in the U.S. - at least one pledged to stop donating after its contribution was publicized - several people and family foundations have also been identified. In 2021, Jewish Currents reported that Michael Leven, a former top official at Las Vegas Sands, the casino owned by the late, far-right pro-Israel and Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson, gave $50,000 to Canary Mission.

In 2016, as the result of an investigation, pro-Israel donor Adam Milstein was fingered as a major Canary Mission funder. At the time, Milstein denied funding the group.

From Inside the Penn Community

By all outward appearances, the Peisach family is committed to supporting the University of Pennsylvania.

Cheryl Peisach is one of 44 members of the university's prestigious board of trustees. Another family member is on the board of advisers of the university's Center for High Impact Philanthropy. And, in 2022, a member of the family, most of whom are based in Florida, contributed $1 million to establish a center to connect entrepreneurial students with successful alumni.

Both Jaime and Cheryl Peisach are Penn alums and, according to a school profile of Cheryl, one son graduated from Penn and another is currently attending.

Actively involved at Penn, Cheryl is Co-President of the Class of 1987 and also serves on the Wharton Undergraduate Executive Board," says the online profile. She is currently Co-chair of the programming committee for the Trustees Council of Penn Women, where she has been involved for 8 years."

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Israel's War on Gaza

With the foundation funding for Canary Mission, however, the Peisach family has also quietly funded another venture impacting the university.

Before the October 7 attacks, Canary Mission was already taking aim at Penn. When Penn scholars and campus groups organized the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, the blacklist group had already published a standalone webpage titled Penn Sponsoring Israel Hate Fest" alleging that the event was hosting purported antisemites.

Several Peisach family members signed an open letter addressed to then-Penn President Liz Magill from alumni and supporters" blasting her decision to go forward with the event.

The fact that University of Pennsylvania academic departments are co-sponsoring the Festival and its platforming of outright antisemitism without denunciation from the university is unacceptable," said the letter whose signatures included Natan Peisach, Jaime Peisach, and at least seven other family members.

Magill resisted a pressure campaign from activist groups like Canary Mission and top donors to cancel the festival. She ultimately resigned as president in the wake of the October 7 attacks and a donor's threat to rescind a $100 million gift to Penn's prestigious business school, Wharton, if she continued in the job.

Penn's campus has emerged as a hotbed for activism supporting Palestinian human rights and criticizing Israel's war in Gaza, but the university has also employed a heavy-handed response to campus protests.

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Last year, 12 Penn police officers, wearing tactical gear and armed with assault rifles, raided the off-campus home of several Penn students. The police seized a personal electronic device and took one student for questioning, later revealing they were investigating the vandalism of a Benjamin Franklin statue conducted by pro-Palestinian activists.

Cheryl isn't the only Peisach tied to both the university and the family's foundation. Monica Peisach Sasson, who is on the board of advisers of Penn's Center for High Impact Philanthropy, is also the vice president of the Natan and Lidia Peisach Family Foundation. Sasson also signed onto the alumni letter about the Palestine Writes Literature Festival. (Sasson did not respond to a request for comment.)

Sasson is also a board member at Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting Israeli military soldiers and veterans. In the same year the Peisach Family Foundation gave $100,000 to Canary Mission, the group sent $180,000 to Friends of the IDF.

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