Gaza crisis spills onto the web

A propaganda war is being waged on the internet between supporters of the Israeli and Palestinian sides in the current conflict in the Gaza Strip.

Activists have turned to defacing websites, taking over computers, and shutting down Facebook groups.

US Military sites, Nato, and an Israeli Bank have all been targeted.

Experts have warned users to be on the lookout for phishing emails and webmasters to ensure their servers are secure.

The hacking of security barriers for political or ideological reasons has been branded by some as hacktivism. And it is thought that as use of the internet grows, so too will the number of attacks.

On 7 January, pro-Palestinian hackers defaced several high-profile websites, including a US Army website, and the Nato Parliamentary Assembly’s website.

Calling themselves “Agd_Scorp/Peace Crew”, they replaced pages with white space and a well-known photograph of a boy throwing stones at an Israeli tank in Gaza, and the Israeli, American and British flags with a red strike through them.

“Stop attacks u israel and usa ! you cursed nations ! one day muslims will clean the world from you!” wrote the hackers.

Dwight Griswold, the Nato Parliamentary Assembly’s head of IT, says that the attackers persisted in attempting access for a number of days following the initial attack, adding that the intruders did not gain access to any of the Assembly’s internal servers.

It’s clear that it is a result of what happening in Gaza. We see it as part of the war.

Web tool offers debate on the Gaza conflict

Source: BBC News

Filed under: Analysis, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Israel ‘endangers roots of our civilization’

At the outset of the Gaza war, Israel and the IDF were eager to promote their media campaign, which they believed would help preserve Israel’s image abroad, allowing the military to do its job at home.

But that may have been wishful thinking.

As Israel’s third week in Gaza marches on, the media coverage is beginning to go sour.

Leading the charge is Time magazine, the most recent cover of which prominently features a Star of David behind barbed wire, a startling and disturbing image that seems to suggest a parallel between the Gaza war and the Holocaust, presumably not to Israel’s credit.

Commenting wryly in his blog for Time competitor The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, a Jewish journalist who has spent time reporting in Gaza, said, “It got me thinking: Which one will last longer – Israel, or Time magazine? I’m betting on Israel.”

Prof. Eytan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan University was less kind.

A media analyst who has specialized in popular American attitudes towards Israel, he was quick to say that Time “has been anti-Semitic for a long time.”

“When [Menachem] Begin won his election in 1977, Time called him a ‘superhawk,’ and compared him to Fagin,” the morally reprehensible Jewish character from Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Gilboa said. Anti-Semitic sentiment, he added, had plagued the magazine ever since.

Speaking of its recent cover art, Gilboa pointed out that Time “likes to use Holocaust imagery that hints that Israel is doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews.”

In his opinion, Time bears responsibility for “a history of not only anti-Semitism, but systematic distortion of what is happening [in Israel].”

But with the current war, the magazine’s sensationalist approach is all but matched by other publications.

The unusual relationship of international media to Israel was described as being subject to “four cardinal sins: obsessiveness, prejudice, condescension and ignorance” by Hanoch Marmari, the former editor of Ha’aretz.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Filed under: Analysis, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

It’s not Israel’s fault it has a strong, well-run army

I feel sorry for the people of Gaza, but I feel even sorrier for the civilian population of southern Israel, which has been bombarded by rockets for the last eight years.

I feel sorry for the kids who wet their beds at night. I feel sorry for the Color Red sirens that send our citizens on a mad dash for shelters, if there are any, in the hopes of finding cover within 15 seconds. I feel sorry about the homes that have been damaged, the cities that have been drained of their citizens and the schools hit by rockets that were miraculously empty at the time.

In the beginning, nobody took Qassams seriously. Israel’s second president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, used to say that Israel won the battle for Safed in 1948 thanks to might and miracle: The might came from reading Psalms and the miracle was that the Davidka homemade mortar worked. During the War of Independence, the Davidka was the equivalent of a Qassam. But over time, this primitive rocket has morphed into a long-range missile.

So we need to be thankful for the decision to launch Operation Cast Lead, if only because the offensive has exposed the strength of these babies and pulled the wraps off the huge arsenal of rockets they have over there in Gaza, capable of reaching Be’er Sheva. If Israel had not acted now, we would have woken up one morning to find missiles in Tel Aviv, special delivery from Iran via the Philadelphi tunnels.

Operation Cast Lead is not a reprisal raid but a defensive war meant to clip Hamas’ wings before it surprises us with a Palestinian version of the Yom Kippur War. It’s not our fault we have a strong, well-run army and state-of-the-art weaponry. What did Hamas think? That we were going to sit around twiddling our thumbs forever?

Source: Haaretz

Filed under: Analysis, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Syria, Iran must be involved in talks – Barack Obama

Five days before he is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, President-elect Barack Obama said in an interview with CBS that he intends to act ‘from day one’ to stop the violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We are going to start on day one, we are going to take a regional approach, we’re going to have to involve Syria in discussions, we are going to have to engage Iran…” said Obama in the interview aired Wednesday night.

Obama added that he was committed to “Israel’s security” but added that ‘we cannot delay on this issue.’

The president-elect said that the ‘bottom line must be clear and that Israel’s security is very important’ but that ‘a solution for two states [most be found], so people can live in peace side by side

Source: Jerusalem Post

Filed under: MidEast, Barack Obama, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, U.S.A, War

World cannot, must not condemn our war on Hamas

The war on Hamas is a war for Israel’s sovereignty. It was launched due to repeated rocket attacks after Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip. No country in the world would put up with a situation in which its sovereignty is undermined and its citizens threatened. Given its small size and many enemies, Israel cannot put up with this. It is therefore up to every decent person who wants Israel to strive for peace, end its occupation and return to its original borders to support its fight for sovereignty.

The war on Hamas has bred a humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed, thousands have been wounded, and more than a million have been left homeless and in despair. There is no denying that Israel should have done much more to prevent the enormity of this crisis from happening. But the international community – which openly supports a war against the Taliban that has taken the lives of hundreds of innocent people – cannot, and must not, condemn this war.

Over the past two weeks, Israel has behaved obtusely and insensitively. But waging war is not a crime. It is yet another chapter in this tragic saga that must come to an end.

Since launching its attack on Gaza on December 27, Israel has achieved most of its goals. Hamas received a harsh blow, Israel regained its deterrent capabilities, and there is a chance the rocket fire on southern Israel will end. A correct diplomatic move may now stop the arms smuggling from Egypt and undermine the Palestinian extremists. If this happens, Israel could achieve its desired overall goal: peaceful coexistence with a weakened and deterred Hamas.

Source: Haaretz

Filed under: Voice, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

The unmeasurable price of war

My close friend Ashraf and I have worked, eaten, discussed… even disagreed, through so many broadcasting assignments – some under intense pressure

On the sixth day of this current war I could not get hold of Ashraf on the mobile phone.

Later, in tears, he told me why. His youngest brother Mahmoud, aged 12, and his 14-year-old cousin, were told it was too dangerous outside Ashraf’s family home in the deserted side streets. So the children played innocently on the family home’s flat roof.

Then an unmanned Israeli aircraft fired two small rockets.

Ashraf rushed upstairs and took the boys to hospital, but it was hopeless. They were buried the same day.

I have also met killers – people who have destroyed innocents like Israeli Ella or Palestinian Mahmoud

Just the latest in a series of disasters for Mahmoud and Ashraf’s very dignified father, a medical doctor. He had been turned into a refugee by the 1948 war.

A year ago he lost one son, my marvellous and irrepressible cameraman Ahmed, in a car crash. And now his youngest boy, Mahmoud.

Macabre scene

Was there any reason for the rocket strike?

Possibly. The Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle may have relayed back live pictures not showing children but just some fuzzy figures moving on a rooftop. How clear the aircraft’s picture of Ashraf’s rooftop was, is going to be the subject of an inquiry, the Israelis have promised.

Map of the Gaza Strip and Israel

Also, Ashraf’s home was close to one of the city’s security headquarters.

In June 2007 I had watched – sheltering under large slabs of meat dangling in a butcher’s shop – as the building was seized by Hamas forces.

Source: BBC News

Filed under: Analysis, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Handing over aid at Gaza border

Halfway through the daily cessation of hostilities in Gaza, Israeli officials are passing hundreds of tonnes of flour, cooking oil and medicines to Palestinians. But they never actually meet them.

The procedure is an extraordinary illustration of the mistrust at the root of much of what is happening. The lorries queue up along the long dusty road at Kerem Shalom, on the Gaza border with Israel and Egypt, to bring supplies.

One by one they drive into huge enclosures surrounded by concrete blast-walls, 5m-6m high. The lorries are unloaded and the desperately needed goods are carefully stacked and searched.

Then the Israeli forklift drivers park and leave. The white metal gates automatically close behind them and tubular roadblocks spring up from the ground across the entrance.

Never meeting

Far away on the other side of the enclosure, another set of white gates silently starts to open.

In a few moments, through a gap in the Israeli gate, we can see older, more battered Palestinian lorries rumbling in, and Gazan workers rushing to the empty forklifts.

A well drilled operation. Lorries with aid trundle in and out of the enclosures.

In perhaps forty minutes, it’s all done and they’re gone – the Israeli gates open – and the whole bizarre process begins again.

“It’s very interesting,”, says Cpt Dorone Spillman of the Israeli Defence Forces.

“You have a team that has been working here for years, to bring aid from here into the Gaza Strip.

“One person drops off the object – and the next person picks it up – and they never, ever, actually meet.

“On a personal level… I hear them talking on the walkie-talkies. ‘Hassan, how are you?’ and they go back and forth.

Source: BBC News

Filed under: Analysis, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Pressure grows for Gaza ceasefire

United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon is heading for talks with Israeli leaders, amid signs of progress in efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

More than 1,000 Gazans and 13 Israelis have reportedly died as Israel’s war on Hamas militants enters its 20th day.

Hamas officials on Wednesday said they were happy with the broad outlines of an Egyptian peace initiative, but details remained to be worked out.

Israel’s chief negotiator Amos Gilad is expected in Cairo for talks later.

In other developments:

* Palestinian medics say seven people were killed in two separate air strikes on Gaza City in the early hours of Thursday

* Israeli military officials say they attacked 70 military targets overnight, including a mosque they say was being used to store weapons

* A boat carrying medical supplies to Gaza is surrounded by Israeli warships in international waters off Lebanon’s southern coast and forced to return to Cyprus, according to charity Free Gaza

* Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip reach 1,028 according to Gaza medical sources. Nearly a third of the dead are said to be children.

Intense diplomacy

Mr Ban is meeting regional leaders as part of the most intensive diplomatic efforts yet to end the fighting.

Egypt has been leading efforts to broker a ceasefire that could include a peacekeeping force being deployed along its border with Gaza to prevent the smuggling of weapons.

After talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday, the UN chief said he hoped Egypt’s initiative would deliver results.

He said it was intolerable that civilians were bearing the brunt of the conflict.

Source: BBC News

Filed under: MidEast, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War

Are human rights for some, but not others?

Liraz Madmony, a 23-year-old law student from Sderot, addressed the UN Human Rights Council Special Session on Gaza in Geneva on behalf of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) on Monday, before the vote by the council that condemned Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and resolved to send a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged Israeli abuses against Palestinians.

Here is the text of her speech.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I come from Sderot, the city in Israel that for eight years has been terrorized, by 10,000 rockets fired against us from Gaza.

As a law student, I learned – and I believe – that all human beings have the right to peace and security.

But when I see today’s resolution, I ask: Why is the United Nations ignoring my suffering? When the terrorists committed these 10,000 violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, why was the UN silent?

Are human rights for some, but not others?

The constant assault on Sderot has destroyed our ability to lead a normal life. The warning before each attack gives us only 15 seconds to run for shelter. Fifteen seconds that will decide, life or death.

Mr. President, who will protect our right to life? My family does not have a bomb shelter, so we run to the most protected room, which is the shower.

There is one attack I will never forget. We heard the siren at seven in the morning. We ran to the shower. The rockets fell next to my house. My little brother, who was 14, went to see if anyone needed help. He found a man whose legs were blown off, and a woman blown to pieces.

My youngest brother is six. The rockets have been falling for eight years. He knows no other reality.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Filed under: Voice, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, Human Rights, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, U.N, War

Hamas still talks on Gaza ceasefire as dead cross 1,000

An Israeli envoy will meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Thursday after a Hamas delegation concluded talks on an Egyptian truce proposal by repeating their demand that Israel withdraw its troops and lift a long-standing blockade on the enclave.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, a former EU envoy to the Middle East, told reporters in the West Bank: “My perception is we are very close to reaching a ceasefire. They are very close but still there is some work to be done.”

In Cairo, Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil said: “The movement has presented a detailed vision to the Egyptian leadership so it can continue its pursuit to end the aggression and lift the injustice on our people in the Gaza Strip.”

He declined to give details but said Hamas would not drop its demands for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the permanent opening of all trade routes.

Arab diplomats say Hamas is reluctant to accept a long-term ceasefire agreement right away. Israel, which wants an end to rocket attacks on its towns and guarantees that Hamas cannot smuggle in more weapons through Egypt, said it would not agree to a truce that allowed the Islamists to regroup and rearm.

“Israel seeks a durable quiet that contains a total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and a working mechanism to prevent Hamas from rearming,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Releasing new figures, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said 1,018 Palestinians had been killed and 4,700 wounded by Israeli forces so far.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said more than 670 civilians were among the dead. Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians hit by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip have been killed since Israel launched its campaign on December 27.

Source: Reuters

Filed under: MidEast, Gaza, Gaza strip, Hamas, IAF, IDF, Israel, Jew, Kassam Rockets, Lebanon, Middle East, Operation Cast Lead, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Qassam Rockets, Terror, Terrorism, The Terror Journal, War