By: Justin Winograd

In one of the most brazen escalations of anti-Israel extremism to surface in recent years, an obscure but increasingly emboldened anti-Zionist organization calling itself the “Punishment for Justice Movement” has established a fully operational website offering cash bounties for the murder, harassment, and intimidation of Israeli academics—and even of scholars living far beyond Israel’s borders. The threats, first brought to international attention by The Jerusalem Post, represent an unprecedented attempt to formalize and commodify political violence against intellectuals, researchers, and scientists whose only “crime,” according to their would-be executioners, is contributing to Israel’s scientific and technological progress.

What at first seemed like a fringe provocation has quickly crystallized into something far more sinister. According to a report on Friday in The Jerusalem Post, the group is explicitly soliciting “contract killers” and “armed fighters” to target hundreds of individuals. The website provides names, home addresses, alleged phone numbers, email addresses, identification numbers, and even family details of academics affiliated with institutions including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion, Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Weizmann Institute of Science, as well as the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Harvard University, and the University of Oxford. These are not only Israeli academics; many reside in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across Europe.

The price list reads like a dystopian marketplace:

• $1,000 for posting printed notices outside a target’s home accusing them of “crimes.”
• $5,000 for actionable intelligence about the target.
• $20,000 for arson attacks against a target’s home or vehicle.
• $50,000 for murder.
• $100,000—double the amount—for the murder of “special targets.”

Among those “special targets,” The Jerusalem Post report confirmed, are Ben-Gurion University President Daniel Chamovitz, physicist and anti-government activist Shikma Bressler, and former Weizmann Institute President Daniel Zajfman. These names, prominent within Israeli public life, have now been elevated into a gruesome hierarchy of violence.

The website, according to the information provided in the The Jerusalem Post report, was established in August and became fully active in September. It allows users to register for “secure communications” to negotiate what it explicitly calls “the contract.” Investigators believe the site is hosted in the Dutch province of Drenthe. The concentrated publication of personally identifiable information (PII) for hundreds of targets strongly suggests that the group has conducted systematic scraping or hacking, although the full extent of its technological sophistication remains unclear.

After The Jerusalem Post published its exposé on Friday, the site briefly went offline due to what administrators described as “technical issues” linked to heavy traffic. But by Saturday evening it had resumed normal operations—an ominous signal that its operators feel neither threatened nor deterred by the exposure.

Unlike anonymous threats spread haphazardly across fringe forums, this operation is structured, deliberate, and unabashedly transactional. It offers a chilling precedent: the normalization of political assassination as a crowdsourced endeavor, funded by anonymous donors and incentivized through financial bounties.

In its public statements, the Punishment for Justice Movement employs rhetorical tropes increasingly common in extremist anti-Israel circles. As The Jerusalem Post report documented, the group claims the academics are “legitimate targets” because they “use their knowledge to kill innocent people and children by spreading weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli military.” The accusation is absurd on its face: Israeli academics, like their peers worldwide, conduct research across disciplines ranging from biology to literature. Many of those listed—particularly those working at CERN—have no connection whatsoever to military research.

According to the information contained in The Jerusalem Post report, two academics said they never received any warnings, despite the group’s claims to have “repeatedly informed” targets that continuing to work with the IDF would result in their assassination. One academic told the publication that they had “never worked on any military project,” speculating that the group likely misidentified them based on “keywords” such as “nuclear” in CERN’s organizational name.

The group’s manifesto attempts to cloak itself in a veneer of humanitarianism, arguing that by assassinating academics it is “working to defend human rights and help the oppressed children of Gaza.” This grotesque inversion of moral logic situates scholars—many of whom have dedicated their careers to basic science, medicine, or mathematics—as perpetrators of genocide, and presents their murder as an act of global justice.

This rhetorical pattern, The Jerusalem Post report noted, mirrors the language used by several anti-Israel militias and terrorist factions over the past decade, who increasingly frame violence not in nationalist terms but as universalized “resistance” against alleged Western oppression.

The publication of these threats has produced a wave of shock, revulsion, and deep personal fear among those targeted. While many academics declined to comment publicly, citing the gravity and sensitivity of the situation, The Jerusalem Post report managed to secure several reactions that capture the emotional spectrum from alarm to unflinching contempt.

One Israeli academic emphasized to The Jerusalem Post the broader implications of the crisis: “Taking down the website would be important, but not a solution. Walking around with targets on our heads puts at risk not only us, but also our families.” The vulnerability is not hypothetical; by releasing familial information, the group has escalated its threat to a campaign of intergenerational intimidation. The scholar’s plea for “more comprehensive solutions from government agencies” reflects the growing consensus among experts: that the publication of targeted assassination lists represents a form of terrorism requiring coordinated international response.

Others responded with bitter humor. Oxford University computer science professor Michael Bronstein told The Jerusalem Post that the initiative appeared to be the work of “nutcases who have a lot of free time and no serious job.” His sardonic tone sharpened further: “I was profoundly disturbed and shocked that my head was valued so cheaply, considering my standing in the academic community. I find anything below a seven-figure sum highly offensive.”

Bronstein’s remarks, while laced with irony, capture the surreal nature of the moment: world-renowned scholars finding themselves priced like commodities on a digital marketplace for political violence.

The case raises urgent questions about the evolving nature of anti-Israel extremism in the West. Historically, most violent campaigns against Israeli intellectuals or scientists originated from state actors or organized terror groups such as Hezbollah or Iran’s intelligence apparatus. The Punishment for Justice Movement represents something different: a decentralized, crowdfunding-style model that draws ideological justification from global anti-Zionist narratives and operational mechanisms from organized crime.

This convergence represents a “new frontier” in the weaponization of digital platforms for real-world assassination attempts. The fact that many academics targeted live in the United States and Europe could expose Western governments to a level of legal, political, and diplomatic pressure they have rarely faced in relation to threats linked to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

Indeed, the presence of American citizens on the list could trigger federal investigations. Solicitation of murder is a crime under U.S. law, and the cross-border element adds layers of jurisdictional complexity.

European governments will face similarly difficult questions. In the Netherlands—where the website’s hosting infrastructure appears to be located—the case may ignite debates over the limits of online anonymity, the responsibilities of hosting providers, and the threshold at which speech becomes terrorism.

The academic targets appear to have been selected not for their political activism, but for their proximity to institutions that underpin Israel’s scientific, technological, and defense ecosystems. Ben-Gurion University, the Technion, and the Weizmann Institute are globally recognized for research in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, physics, chemistry, and biomedical innovation. These institutions are essential to Israel’s knowledge-based economy, and thus are seen by anti-Israel groups as viable proxies for attacking the Israeli state.

What the Punishment for Justice Movement fails to grasp—or willfully ignores—is that Israel’s academic research is not monolithic, nor is it exclusively military. It encompasses cancer research, nanotechnology, climate science, agriculture, neuroscience, archaeology, and countless other fields benefiting the entire world.

The Jerusalem Post has documented how Israeli universities have produced breakthroughs in renewable energy, desalination, medical imaging, and humanitarian technologies. To reduce these institutions to caricatures of militarism is both factually wrong and morally reprehensible.

What makes this case particularly alarming is not only the creation of a hit-list, but the normalization of rhetoric that portrays scholars as war criminals. This narrative has seeped into certain activist movements, particularly in Western academic settings where anti-Israel sentiment has grown increasingly vitriolic. While the vast majority of critics of Israeli policy would never endorse violence, the demonization of Israeli scholars as agents of genocide creates a fertile environment in which extremists operate.

As The Jerusalem Post report noted, the group’s manifesto blends human-rights language with militant objectives, positioning its campaign as a moral duty. This moral laundering is not new; it has been employed by extremist groups across ideological spectrums. But when applied to academia—an arena that prides itself on intellectual freedom—it becomes especially corrosive.

Thus far, no government has publicly announced a comprehensive plan to address the threats. But privately, Western security officials are alarmed. According to experts cited by The Jerusalem Post, the international nature of the hit-list could force cooperation between intelligence agencies that do not typically collaborate on anti-Israel activism.

Israel, too, faces a strategic challenge. Protecting hundreds of academics across multiple continents is no easy task. The psychological toll is already evident. And the longer the website remains online, the more emboldened its operators—and potential followers—may become.

The Israeli academic who spoke to The Jerusalem Post captured the dilemma succinctly: “Taking the site down is important, but it’s not enough. This is a global problem.”

The emergence of an online marketplace for the murder of scholars marks a new and frightening chapter in the global campaign against Israel and its intellectual infrastructure. While the Punishment for Justice Movement may be fringe, its tactics are dangerously scalable. The conflation of armed extremism with anti-Israel activism threatens to erode the boundary between political speech and violence—a boundary already fraying on Western campuses and in public discourse.

In its coverage, The Jerusalem Post placed an emphasis on a sobering truth: the scholars targeted are not symbols, nor abstract representations of state power. They are human beings—parents, spouses, teachers, scientists—whose work enriches the world. To place a price on their heads is not activism. It is terrorism.

The response from governments, universities, and civil society will determine whether this remains a disturbing footnote or becomes a model for future extremist campaigns. For now, the academics who woke up to find themselves listed on a digital bounty board must grapple with the terrifying reality that their intellectual contributions have made them targets in a global ideological war.

And as The Jerusalem Post expose indicated, the stakes extend far beyond academia. This is a test of whether the international community will tolerate the monetization of murder in the name of politics—or whether it will decisively confront a movement that threatens not only Israeli scholars, but the foundational principles of academic freedom across the world.