This article was originally published by Truthout on April 20, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
A reckoning could be coming for pro-Israel groups known for doxxing Palestine advocates. In March, the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) filed a class-action lawsuit in Illinois state court against the organizations Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism, as well as groups and individuals identified as their funders or board members.
“This case represents addressing a broader harm caused by organized doxxing and harassment campaigns,” Laila Ali, a Chicago-based artist and activist and one of six named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told Truthout. “I’m hoping that it’ll establish clear consequences for those who engage in those tactics.”
StopAntisemitism and Canary Mission have histories of systematically posting the personal information of individuals (known as doxxing or doxing) who engage in pro-Palestine speech, or criticize Israel’s assaults on Palestine and the United States’ involvement, on their websites and social media channels to whip up attack campaigns. Many of those targeted have been Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian young professionals who have faced backlash on university campuses or in their workplaces, as well as online harassment and threats to their personal safety.
Alongside Ali, the named plaintiffs in the new case include two physicians, an IT professional, a former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student organizer, and an English lecturer at Loyola University Chicago. The class includes anyone residing in Illinois who has had their personal information shared by StopAntisemitism or Canary Mission without their consent and experienced harm as a result. CAIR-Chicago Staff Attorney Noah Halpern told Truthout his organization expects the group to include about 300 people. The organization is still soliciting outreach from Illinois residents who may be part of this class.
“The goal is to have relief for everyone and do that through this vehicle of a class action,” Halpern explained to Truthout. The lawsuit seeks injunctive and declaratory relief and damages, meaning CAIR-Chicago would like to secure a judgment prohibiting the defendants from doxxing Illinois residents, requiring the defendants to remove existing content about Illinois residents from their social media channels and websites, awarding damages to compensate for harms to the plaintiffs, and assessing punitive damages.
The case was filed using Illinois’s Civil Liability for Doxing Act, which took effect in January 2024. Halpern said that bringing a case like this was on the minds of CAIR-Chicago’s lawyers as soon as that law passed. “We’re excited to be moving forward and to have the opportunity to try to hold Canary Mission and their affiliates accountable,” he told Truthout.
The first reported verdict under the Illinois law came down in March, when a Will County judge awarded close to $46,000 to an election worker who was targeted after a fabricated Facebook post about her was shared dozens of times.
In July 2024, CAIR-Chicago also filed a doxxing case against Wayne Levinson and Canary Mission on behalf of Illinois resident Kinza Khan, seeking damages exceeding $75,000 for the emotional distress, life disruptions, and economic harm she experienced after being doxxed. In November 2023, Levinson filmed Khan near a light pole plastered with “Kidnapped by Hamas” posters. The video went viral after Levinson posted it to Instagram, and Canary Mission then posted Khan’s personal information on its website alongside claims that she supported terrorism and antisemitism. Khan has suffered harassment and significant emotional distress since her information was made public. Her case is ongoing.
Ali was targeted after a similar video showing her tearing down a poster affixed to a light pole near her workplace was shared online. “When I was taking down the poster, it was like I was seeing so much grievance, I was seeing so many Palestinian people lose their families and their homes, and I was seeing this [poster campaign] to shape the narrative of what was happening, so the onus was on me to take that down,” Ali told Truthout.
She never imagined the act would cost her job and lead to months of online harassment and threats to her safety. But that’s what happened after StopAntisemitism posted the video and asked followers to identify Ali in January 2024. Subsequently, StopAntisemitism shared Ali’s personal information alongside the video and tagged her employer. Soon, Ali was receiving dozens of harassing messages online, and her employer was receiving calls and emails demanding she be fired. After the company posted a statement on X announcing it had fired Ali, StopAntisemitism celebrated the decision.
“It was immediate,” Ali told Truthout. “The day after I got doxxed, the following morning, I had a meeting via Zoom and [my employer] essentially said, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, but we do have to terminate you.’ It was just too much bad PR for the company.”
Doxxing campaigns launched by pro-Israel groups like the one Ali endured often hinge on claims that engaging in pro-Palestine or anti-Zionist speech or criticizing Israel is antisemitic. This conflation has been weaponized with greater fervor since October 7, 2023, with the aim of intimidating or silencing critics of the Israeli government and U.S. foreign policy and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians. StopAntisemitism boasts that of more than 1,000 individuals it has doxxed since that date, over 400 have been fired.
“The way that the rhetoric was twisted in order to equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, we’re experiencing the aftermath of the harm that did,” Laura Goldstein, a lecturer at Loyola and another named plaintiff in the CAIR-Chicago suit, told Truthout. “That unfortunate and tragic weaponization of that terminology has been so harmful to so many people, and we’re in the process of unwrapping it now — that’s the work we’re doing [in this lawsuit].”
Goldstein was targeted by Canary Mission in April 2024. They serve as a faculty advisor for their campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, and Canary Mission claimed the chapter had endorsed war crimes. It also published Goldstein’s name, social media handles, workplace, and other identifying information on its website. Soon after, Goldstein began receiving harassing messages on social media, via email, and even a letter delivered to their on-campus mailbox. The messages included graphic threats of sexual violence.
“It’s like a cold wave of fear that just paralyzes your entire body. I was extremely scared for my life, extremely scared of being treated in the ways that were being threatened,” Goldstein recalled to Truthout. “I thought they knew where to find me and that they were going to do it because that’s what they were saying.”
Ali recalls having a similar reaction when StopAntisemitism posted her information online. “It was incredibly stressful, very rattling, and isolating,” she told Truthout.
Alongside more easily quantifiable harms, like Ali’s loss of employment, the CAIR-Chicago lawsuit also addresses the emotional and psychological fallout of being targeted by a doxxing campaign. “The fear that doxxing causes, the substantial life disruptions that doxxing causes — like people change their commuting behavior, install extra security features in their homes, change the way they use the internet because they’ve been doxxed — the statute contemplates that as injury, as well,” Halpern explained to Truthout.
Although many things have changed for Ali and Goldstein, neither said the attacks had deterred them from speaking out for Palestine. “That level of threat was effective in terms of the level of fear that it produced in me, [but] what wasn’t effective was that I didn’t stop doing anything that I was doing in terms of my justice work,” Goldstein said.
Goldstein also told Truthout it was particularly meaningful to them as a Jewish person to be a named plaintiff “to show that being anti-Zionist, being anti-genocide goes across different groups of humanity [and that] those of us who believe in justice, who believe in speaking out for other people and against harm of other people — that’s an important value.”
The case is in its earliest stages, and it is too soon to know how long it will take to reach a courtroom. But Halpern told Truthout that CAIR-Chicago welcomes the chance to shed light on Canary Mission’s secretive dealings and to demand accountability from StopAntisemitism and Canary Mission for the harm they have caused to so many Illinoisans.
“[The lawsuit] brings to the forefront that these are not legitimate organizations, they’re not legitimately trying to fight antisemitism, [and] they’re not putting out credible information,” Halpern said. “They are propaganda, at best, and at worst, something more sinister and a real attempt to harm people who are speaking up and speaking out about the rights of Palestinians and of the oppression that the state of Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians.”
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