Israel Probes ‘Punishment for Justice’ Bounty Campaign Targeting Academics Worldwide
Israeli security agencies have launched an investigation after an anonymous pro-Palestinian website published detailed personal information and offered cash bounties for attacks on hundreds of Israeli academics in Israel, Europe, and North America. The site, called “The Punishment for Justice Movement,” lists researchers from universities including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion, the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and CERN, and urges users to carry out violence against them.
Set up in August and apparently hosted in the Dutch province of Drenthe while using virtual private networks and encrypted communications, the site offers graded rewards for harassment, arson, and murder. Israeli media report that payments range from low four-figure sums for placing signs outside homes or passing on information, up to $100,000 for killing those labeled “special targets.” These include Ben-Gurion University President Daniel Chamovitz, protest leader and physicist Shikma Bressler, and senior figures linked to Israel’s defense industries.
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The group justifies the campaign by claiming that the researchers “used their knowledge to kill innocent people and children by spreading weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli military,” and invites “all unofficial military groups, armed groups and fighters to join the movement to confront these criminals and benefit from the rewards of punishing these victims and killers while trying to defend human rights and help the oppressed children of Gaza.”
Israeli intelligence services, including the Mossad, the Shin Bet security agency, and the National Cyber Directorate, are examining who is behind the site, with officials suspecting an Iranian role. Investigators are concerned that the posting of what appear to be images of Israeli passports and US visas, as well as home addresses and phone numbers, could make academics especially vulnerable when they travel abroad.
The Committee of University Presidents condemned the campaign as a “dangerous and horrifying escalation”. It warned that the site “marks academics and permits their blood,” adding that “the current reality, in which domestic incitement joins a wave of antisemitism and hostility from abroad, creates a toxic and deadly mix that could end in loss of life.”
Chamovitz said Israeli academics had been warning for years that hostility toward them was intensifying through the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement and online campaigns, but that officials “haven’t done a thing on the BDS issue, but we hope that now this will be a wake-up call.” He also linked the online incitement to verbal attacks at home, noting that far-right Deputy Minister Almog Cohen had publicly said the university head “should be ashamed and will pay the price” for not firing a left-wing lecturer. Universities have urged staff to increase security awareness, avoid publicizing travel plans, and report suspicious activity.
