Iran may be behind BDS ‘hit list’ targeting Boston Jews - report

According to an exclusive interview, an ex-Israeli counter-terrorism advisor to prime ministers says Hezbollah has a list of targets.

 The BDS Boston Mapping Project  highlights people and movements that the BDS group identified as pro-Israel, including Jewish community organizations, religious organizations, and even Jewish schools. (photo credit: THE BOSTON MAPPING PROJECT/SCREENSHOT VIA MAPLIBERATION.ORG)
The BDS Boston Mapping Project highlights people and movements that the BDS group identified as pro-Israel, including Jewish community organizations, religious organizations, and even Jewish schools.
(photo credit: THE BOSTON MAPPING PROJECT/SCREENSHOT VIA MAPLIBERATION.ORG)

The Islamic Republic of Iran may be the regime that created an anonymous "Mapping Project" website that serves to pinpoint locations of Jewish or Zionist communal spaces and organizations as well as law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts in an "attempt to expose and isolate" supporters of Israel.

The Mapping Project also includes "a disturbing and antisemitic call to 'dismantle' and 'disrupt' most of Boston's Jewish community and concludes with a thinly veiled threat that 'every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted," the ADL has stated.

According to a Zachor statement, “more than two-thirds of the 505 ‘targets’ featured on the website are not Jewish institutions, but rather US security institutions, including the exact locations of 271 police stations, 9 US military bases and installations, and offices of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Secret Service, and US government-linked weapons manufacturers, all of which are pinpointed on a single interactive map.”

The legal organization noted that the “outsized focus placed on the American security apparatus indicates that the map is not domestic in origin, but might be a product of a foreign agenda and that the chief suspect is the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The Boston Mapping Project

The website Mapping Project was widely covered in June 2022 and largely focused on potential violent attacks against American Jews, Zionist and Jewish organizations in Boston.

 Demonstrators chant during a pro-Palestinian rally, amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Boston, Massachusetts, US, May 18, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/BRIAN SNYDER)
Demonstrators chant during a pro-Palestinian rally, amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Boston, Massachusetts, US, May 18, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/BRIAN SNYDER)

Zachor’s 24-page report titled "The Unseen Threat of The Mapping Project," argues  there "is considerable evidence that Iranian elements may be involved in creating the Mapping Project."

The detailed study notes that the Iranian regime-owned PressTV -published a "supportive column" on June 26, 2022, and a 30-minute video segment about it in July of the same year that praised the Mapping Project and called for its replication in all 50 American states.

PressTV reported, "It is perfectly legitimate to target Jewish groups that support Zionist crimes, just as it is to target Christian groups that do the same, The Mapping project, to its credit is already doing that."

The American government sanctioned PressTV in June 2021 but it was unrelated to the Mapping Project. The US government said at the time that it seized the PressTV website because the outlet is used as a front for Iran’s regime to ”subvert US democratic processes.”

Marc Greendorfer, President of Zachor Legal Institute, said about the Mapping Project: “There is no logical explanation for why the map was published other than to serve as a kill list for extremists to use when targeting United States’ national security infrastructure and prominent Jews in America.

"One only needs to look at the increasingly frequent violent attacks against law enforcement, homeland security and Jews in the United States to see that whoever is behind this project is trying to promulgate violence to promote an anti-American agenda. We believe that this has all the hallmarks of Iranian terror.”

Iran's strategic "kill list"

Iran’s use of a “kill list” resembles the tactic of its chief strategic ally—the Lebanese terrorist movement Hezbollah—when it formulated a similar list over thirty years. New information obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post shows that the Israeli government obtained a Hezbollah “kill list.”

Speaking to the Post by telephone, Yigal Carmon, who served as counter-terrorism advisor to two prime ministers heading governments from both Likud (Yitzhak Shamir) and Labor (Yitzhak Rabin), said Israeli “intelligence got a package that went from Germany to Lebanon and did not find the address[in Lebanon] for some reason and went back to Germany.

The Germans opened the package and realized what was in it and the Israelis got it later. It was a fat envelope that contained 600 addresses about Israeli official representation—embassies, consulates and companies in Germany. And pictures of officials and synagogues and Jewish centers.”

 Demonstrators chant during a pro-Palestinian rally, amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Boston, Massachusetts, US, May 18, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/BRIAN SNYDER)
Demonstrators chant during a pro-Palestinian rally, amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence, in Boston, Massachusetts, US, May 18, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/BRIAN SNYDER)

Carmon continued that the list “contained everything that can serve as a target. Mapping existed back then. It is more targeting than mapping.”

There have been numerous examples of Hezbollah and Iranian regime attacks on European Jews and Israelis over the decades. In 2012, Hezbollah operatives conducted surveillance on Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria and blew up an Israeli tour bus, murdering five Israelis and their Muslim Bulgarian bus driver.

US Defense analyst's insight 

Rebekah Koffler, a former analyst at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, told Fox News Digital about the Mapping Project:  "It is my professional assessment that there’s a high probability of Iran's involvement in this heinous project. The project’s stated goals, antisemitic narrative, and methodology employed to galvanize support from extremist sympathizers are consistent with the tradecraft of Iranian intelligence tradecraft and Iran’s declared policy to target US persons.”

The website of the Boston Mapping Project state, "Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted."

A spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry wrote on Twitter last year that Israel "strongly condemns" the Mapping project."This whole project is reminiscent of a dangerous antisemitic pattern of activity known from antiquity through the horrors of the 20th century: a pattern which has led to violence against Jews and their institutions," ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat wrote on Twitter.