By Aditi Roy

On Nov. 26, journalists and activists gathered at Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU)  Rogers Communications Centre to discuss Canary Mission and other surveillance and doxxing platforms targeting pro-Palestine expression. 

The School of Journalism partnered with Ricochet Media, a national non-profit media outlet and CanCulture Magazine to promote their investigative podcast, There is a List. 

The podcast details the tactics used by Canary Mission—a website that claims to combat “anti-Zionist” sentiments, according to Middle East Studies Association of North America—to intimidate pro-Palestinian advocates by doxxing them, spamming them with threatening messages and issuing illegitimate workplace complaints to scare them into silence. 

The panel was hosted by the School of Journalism’s associate chair Sonya Fatah and speakers included Zahra Khozema, host of There is a List; Dr. Yipeng Ge, Palestinian activist and primary care physician; independent journalist Samira Mohyeddin; and president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, Yara Shoufani. 

The two-hour discussion explored themes of safety concerns, ongoing surveillance, silencing voices, newsroom resistance and broader pressures shaping  pro-Palestinian advocacy in Canada—and at TMU.

At the panel, Khozema discussed the timely importance of the conversation, referencing the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

She also explained the relevance of the panel being hosted at TMU given recent incidents at pro-Palestinian demonstrations on and near campus. 

“It’s very unfortunate that things are happening at TMU right now with student brutalization,” she said. “Just a year ago, this was the same case [with] the encampments and the surveillance and violence that students were facing.”

In 2024, students at the University of Toronto gathered at King’s College Circle where they camped for more than 60 days, calling for the university to divest from organizations linked to the Israeli occupation, according to CBC. 

More recently at TMU, a student was forcibly restrained and arrested by campus security during a pro-Palestine protest in September. 

Shortly after, students organized a rally and walk-out in objection to the incident, as previously reported by The Eyeopener. The university later launched an independent review of the incident on Nov. 18. 

On Nov. 5 TMU student group Students Supporting Israel held an event just off campus where they hosted a former Israeli Defense Forces soldier. A group of pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrated at the event and a physical altercation broke out, as previously reported by The Eye. 

Toronto Police Services later disclosed that six protestors, including some TMU students, were charged in relation to the altercation, as per the same coverage.. The names of those charged were also made public online.

The first episode of the There is a List podcast begins with featuring Khozema’s former classmate, a TMU graduate who was in her early twenties when she appeared on Canary Mission. The situation forced her to temporarily relocate outside of Canada until the situation de-escalated. 

Khozema explained how finding her classmate listed on the platform influenced her podcast project. “When I was going through this list, I saw a familiar face, and there were heaps of people that I graduated with at TMU,” she said. 

At the panel, Dr. Yipeng Ge discussed the consequences of his pro-Palestine activism. “I shared social media posts in support of Palestinian human rights in October 2023…a physician in the community found them and doxxed me,” he said. His suspension from the University of Ottawa followed promptly a week after the posts were made public.

Mohyeddin, who is an independent journalist, detailed how a CBC food segment on hummus made her a target of a pro-Israeli media platform.

Mohyeddin said she believes she was targeted after she released an episode acknowledging the Palestinian roots of hummus and the Nakba. “This caused eight months of meetings for me inside the CBC, hummus—tahini, lemon, olive oil and chickpea.” 

Nakba refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, according to the United Nations. Mohyeddin explained that including the history of Nakba was per the request of her then-editor at CBC to elaborate on the origins of hummus.

She described the fear she felt after a pro-Israeli media platform continued to surveil her due to her food segment on hummus. She also saw photos of her circulating on the internet. 

“[Photos] of me walking on the campus at University of Toronto I mean, that just makes you think someone’s watching,” she said. A doxxing group had previously published and circulated an image of Mohyeddin with a “forked tongue,” a common demonizing imagery.

Managing editor of Ricochet Media and event organizer Andrea Houston emphasized resilience among journalists. Houston is also a contract lecturer at TMU’s journalism school.

“You have an entire industry behind you—don’t be persuaded by the loud few voices that may come out of the woodwork,” she said.