Anonymous Hits “Israel” Hard: To ‘Erase’ Zionist Presence from Cyber World

Local Editor





Dubbing it ‘#OpIsrael', Anonymous hackers launched the cyber-attack campaign against "Israeli" websites, in protest to the Zionist policy towards the Palestinians. The group has vowed to "erase" "Israel" from the internet by disabling "Israeli" websites and new media accounts.

Several "Israeli" websites reported slowdowns on Saturday night. The websites of "Israel's" Bureau of Statistics and the Education Ministry were down on Sunday, but "Israeli" officials claimed that the sites were temporarily out of action "because of a technical fault" and that the hackers have failed to cause serious disruption. The websites of "Israel's" Ministry of Military Affairs and spy agency, Mossad, also the Industry and Trade Chamber have been targeted.

Anonymous has listed 1,300 "Israeli" websites as targets. Several privately owned sites have also come under attack. According to Israeli daily Haaretz, hackers have also attacked almost 19,000 "Israeli" Facebook accounts on Sunday.
"You have NOT stopped your endless human right violations. You have NOT stopped illegal settlements. You have NOT respected the ceasefire. You have shown that you do NOT respect international law," Anonymous said in a statement referring to the "Israeli" regime.

"This is why on April 7, elite cyber-squadrons from around the world have decided to unite in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel as one entity to disrupt and erase "Israel" from the cyberspace," the Anonymous statement added.
The virtual campaign was launched by hackers from all over the world affiliated with the Anonymous group. The campaign in addition to vandalizing these websites, has released hundreds of e-mail addresses and passwords.

"Israeli" sources said that the attack was launched from areas in south Africa. Later on, the group was followed by other hackers from Arab and Muslim countries, including Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, Iran and Indonesia, with around 5000 hackers taking part in the operation.

Downplaying the operation, some media outlets, such as Agence France Press and al-Jazeera TV, along with "Israeli" media, alleged that the attack was a failed operation.
"Hackers have launched an assault on "Israeli" websites, but the damage has been minimal as the Jewish state is prepared to fend off such attacks," AFP said in its report.
"The hackers associated with the activist group Anonymous reportedly hit the websites of the premier's office, the defense ministry, the education ministry and the Central Bureau of Statistics, among others, but all appeared to be running normally," the AFP report read.

Quoting Yitzhak ben Yisrael, an official at the "Israeli" government's National Cyber Bureau, the report claimed that "The scope of the damage to "Israeli" sites was "more or less non-existent".

As for al-Jazeera, it said that "a weekend cyber-attack campaign has targeted "Israeli" government websites but failed to cause serious disruption." Also quoting Ben Yisrael, al-Jazeera wrote "hackers had mostly failed to shut down key sites."
The first ‘Op-Israel' was launched by Anonymous during the eight-day "Israeli" war on the Gaza Strip in November 2012. Some 700 "Israeli" websites came under repeated cyber-attacks.

Source: News Agencies, edited by moqawama.org