Hundreds of Jewish creative professionals and academics in Australia were doxxed and harassed after a New York Times reporter leaked their information to pro-Palestinian activists earlier this year, according to an investigation published by the Wall Street Journal released Thursday.
The Jewish Australians were members of a WhatsApp group set up after the Oct. 7 attacks to provide support for professionals as antisemitism spiked in the weeks following the war’s start. The group was composed of Jews from across the political spectrum, with some not considering themselves Zionists.
How did the leak happen?
Back in January, New York Times reporter Natasha Frost downloaded hundreds of pages of content from the group and then shared it with a source for an article. Later, those messages made their way to pro-Palestinian protesters.
Frost is based in Melbourne, Australia, and was added to the group soon after it was formed.
The Australian newspaper The Age first reported on the leak in February. The shared information included a spreadsheet with links to the social media accounts of members and a photo gallery of over 100 Jewish Australians. The link to the files was shared by several Australian creative professionals and pro-Palestinian activists.
A Melbourne-based journalist told The Age at the time that her name was on the list even though she had never been in the group and has been vocally critical of Israel.
“I am not a Zionist, I have never been a Zionist, I am just a Jewish woman trying to go about my life. This is a group of any Jew they know the name of. I can’t believe it is happening,” said the journalist who asked not to be named.
The Times said last week that it had reviewed the incident and took “appropriate action” against Frost, although it did not specify what actions were taken. The newspaper stressed that the decision to share the data from the group was a “clear violation of our ethics” and that “this was done without the knowledge or approval of The Times.”
Frost told the Wall Street Journal that she shared the document with only one person, adding that “its subsequent dissemination and misuse happened entirely without my knowledge or consent. I was shocked by these events, which put me and many others at terrible risk. I deeply regret my decision.”
Australian Jewish community warns of dangers posed by leak
Australian Jews named on the leaked list have been the targets of widespread harassment, including death threats.
Maggie May and Joshua Moshe, two Jewish residents of Melbourne, received a voicemail from a woman calling them racist and warning them to “watch your…back.”
“All us… know where you are now,” added the caller, who also sent them an image of their 4-year-old son.
Shortly after the leak was first reported, Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin warned that “these people have painstakingly collected the names, faces, professions and other personal information of a group of Australians whose sole common trait is that they are Jews.”
“It is a ‘Jew list’ drawn up and published in a menacing manner intended to inflict maximum emotional damage and professional loss,” said Ryvchin. ““They are telling those who chant ‘Where’s the Jews?’ exactly who and where the Jews are.”
Shortly after Oct. 7, a group of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered near the Sydney Opera House and chanted “Where’s the Jews?” among other antisemitic slogans.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry called for anti-doxxing laws to be passed to stop such leaks. Not long after, Australia’s Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced that the government was working on such laws to criminalize “the targeted and malicious release of personal information without permission.”
Pro-Palestinian activists claim leak was “whistle-blowing,” not doxxing
Pro-Palestinian activists who spread the leak claimed the WhatsApp group in question was being used to target pro-Palestinian activists, asserting that the leak was not meant to target the Jewish community and was regular whistle-blowing.
“This is a group of ‘creatives’ working to silence voices calling for Palestinian liberation,” said author Clementine Ford, one of the activists who shared the data, in an Instagram post.
Ford insisted that anti-Zionist Jewish people were involved in leaking the data in the first place. She called it “sickening” that she would likely see some of the people on the list at professional events.
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network accused the group of taking control of the independent decision-making power of Australia’s national broadcaster, adding that the firing of an anti-Israel ABC journalist “spoke volumes about the level of influence pro-Israel lobby groups had over the media.”
Despite the list reportedly including private information, the activists who leaked the group said that no addresses, phone numbers, or emails were shared. They added, however, that the names of all of the members, as well as other information, was made available through a transcript of the WhatsApp group.
“The transcript clearly demonstrates collective actions taken by Zionists to contact employers, funding bodies, publishers, and journalists to censure anyone deemed to be a threat to Zionist narrative,” said the activists in a joint statement in February.
“To frame the sharing of this information as antisemitic or ‘doxxing’ is an attempt to distract and deflect from the bigoted rhetoric and organized aggression enacted by many in the Zionist group chat against activists, artists, academics, and anyone who speaks up for Palestine,” added the activists. “Sharing the transcript is in the public interest — for fairness and for justice.”
WhatsApp group members say they were exercising their democratic rights
Lee Kofman, a Melbourne-based Jewish author who managed the WhatsApp group, told The Age that the group was only meant to provide support for Jewish professionals feeling alienated by their peers because of the war in Gaza.
Kofman stressed that the group was not a political lobby and was meant to oppose “professional discrimination we are experiencing, like loss of work or workplace safety; silencing of our voices; overt racism we’ve experienced from some peers; media coverage of issues affecting our community that we feel is unfair or untrue.”
She added that some group members had “exercised their democratic right to complain to the government, media and institutions.” One of these cases was a call by some of the members of the group to fire Antoinette Lattouf, a broadcaster at Australia’s ABC channel who accused Israel of trying to starve those in Gaza. Lattouf was sacked a few days before her contract was set to end.
Josh Burns, a member of the Labor party in Australia’s parliament, stressed that “This is beyond the sort of trivial social media posts that some people are putting up. This has resulted in really serious consequences where people have received death threats,” according to The Guardian.
Burns noted that one family had to go into hiding after receiving an “avalanche of threats” and asserted that the activities associated with the group had the right to organize and express their views. “We have to be very careful about attributing some sort of sinister motivation with democratic activity,” said Burns.
Ramona Koval, a former ABC journalist, rejected the portrayal of the group as maliciously trying to silence pro-Palestinian professionals. She stressed that the group would suggest “perfected legal, normal and well-used ways of legitimately complaining to media groups and other formal organizations about matters they thought were unfair or discriminatory.”
Other members of the group also rejected the claims of activists who shared the leak, telling The Age “No one is out on the streets, no one is shutting down docks. If the harshest thing we do is write letters, that is hardly bringing democracy to its knees. If Jewish people can’t kvetch online, where have we come to in life?”
