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from: Zahikim@aol.com
Editorials about Palestine
from: JSalloum@aol.com
Intifada 3
from: JSalloum@aol.com
Cyber attack
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From: Zahikim@aol.com
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 17:02:03 EDT
Subject: Editorials about Palestine
To Whom,
I got a message at work saying that you are interested in alternative info
and viewpoints on the Middle East. Here are two editorials that I recently
wrote.
Hope you can find a way to use them,
Kim Jensen
1442 Excelsior Avenue #1
Oakland, CA 94602
(510) 482-9505
Kim Jensen is a writer and editor who has lived and taught in the Middle
East. She is a regular contributor to several publications, including Boston
Book Review and Al Jadid Magazine.
Palestinians are Facing an Escalation of Violence and Repression
Word Count: 650
Two weeks ago, ninety-four out of one hundred US Senators signed a letter to
President Clinton, urging him to continue to give unconditional support to
Israel, and to veto any "anti-Israel" security council resolutions. In the
Congress, Reps Gilman (R-NY) and Gejdenson (D-CT) have sponsored a bill which
would place exclusive blame for the current violence in Israel on the
Palestinians. In the meantime the two main Presidential candidates (who
refused to let Arab-American presidential candidate Ralph Nader even to sit
in the audience at the debates), are practically tripping over each other to
prove their unfailing loyalty to this openly racist state.
It shouldn't be any surprise then that the Palestinian people refuse to
pacify their justified anger, in order to re-enter a lopsided peace process
sponsored by the greatest military ally of Israel. Again and again, the
United States claims to be an "honest broker" of peace in the Middle East,
and yet by clearly siding with Israel and continuing to offer it six billion
dollars in aid and weaponry a year, the US gives Israel the green light-not
for peace, but for war.
This past week, Amnesty International issued two separate statements
concerning Israel's violation of human rights; and it is urging a ban on all
transfers of attack helicopters to Israel who has been using them to "fire on
Palestinian civilians, including children." Amnesty International has
re-iterated its call for an International investigation into the very serious
human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories. Also, the UN commission on
Human Rights has condemned Israel's "disproportionate and indiscriminate use
of force in violation of international law...which constituted a war crime
and a crime against humanity."
Now in the most recent turn of events, the supposed dove, Ehud Barak, for
whom 97% of Arab citizens voted in the last elections, has invited extreme
rightwing war criminal, Ariel Sharon, into his government. This invitation
should lay to rest any false notions that Ehud Barak is or ever was a man of
peace. Although Israeli pundits and ambassadors would like to portray him as
someone on the scale of Ghandi in his generosity toward "the other," nothing
could be further from the truth. On his watch, the territories have seen an
expansion of illegal Jewish settlements the likes of which the Likud had ever
overseen. The violence of the current military campaign against Palestinian
mourners and demonstrators is unparalleled in the history of Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is clear that the government of
Israel, lead by Barak, intends to murder and maim an entire generation of
Palestinians with impunity. They are now threatening to seal off the
territories in an apartheid-like attempt to starve and bomb Palestinians into
total submission. It's a very very frightening prospect.
But Palestinians have proven that they will not settle for anything less than
justice and self-determination. For 52 years, since Israel was founded on the
ruins of Arab villages and towns, Palestinians have been fighting and dying
for their cause, and they are not about to stop now. It is their legitimate
national right to liberate themselves from illegal occupation. So if we
Americans would like to help the cause of peace in that region, we need to
start by acknowledging the history that has led to this current debacle.
As American citizens we must demand that our government stop all military and
financial aid to this rogue State which is in violation of numerous UN
resolutions and which uses excessive force to solve all of its problems.
Innocent children are dying, and not just the stone throwing youth. Access to
hospitals is blocked by the Israeli military; civilian apartments and homes
have been bombed; villages are under siege; fanatic settlers have been
murdering poor peasants all week. The situation has become intolerable. The
Palestinian population is in dire need of protection- not tomorrow, not in a
week or a month, but right now.
Palestinians Demand Freedom From Israeli Occupation
The turbulent events during the past weeks in both Yugoslavia and in
Palestine offer us an opportunity to gage, yet again, the ongoing hypocrisy
of US foreign policy. Both countries have been experiencing popular
uprisings, violence, and political upheaval, yet both of these separate yet
simultaneous revolts have been treated very differently by the US
administration and media.
Spurred by an election victory which President Milosevic threatened to annul,
Yugoslavs of all stripes have poured into the streets in protest. They
occupied government buildings by force, set fires, beat people they
considered collaborators. To his credit, Milosevic did not employ brutality
to quash the protests; and he finally submitted to the overwhelming evidence
of his defeat. Had Milosevic let loose a military response using live
ammunition, tear gas, tanks, helicopters, and rockets, of the sort that we
have seen in Israel, no doubt he and his regime would have been condemned
roundly in the West and perhaps even threatened with another war. As it
happened, all the West European and American leaders-who desire to see
Yugoslavia as yet another "free market" playground-praised this change of
Serbian leadership as nothing short of a revolution.
In the Arab World another popular revolt has been shaking up the status quo,
though in the United States it has been framed in an entirely different
light. The Palestinian people, utterly disenchanted with their 33 year
occupation, tired of constant Israeli provocation and violence, infuriated by
the increase of Jewish theft and settlement of their land-have bravely stood
up yet again, frustrated with a "peace process" which would deny them
sovereignty over their own lands, control of their borders, water rights,
their capital as East Jerusalem (which is still considered an occupied city),
and the right for refugees to return to their homes. Considering that
Palestinians have lost, in a 50 year Zionist land grab, 80% of historic
Palestine, it should be clear to anyone concerned about human rights and
"ethnic cleansing" why Palestinians are so angry.
But even as the whole world watched Israel's use of brutal and repressive
force against a largely unarmed people, the US administration and media
continue to divide the blame evenly, deploying the usual arsenal of cliches:
"cycle of violence," "spiral of violence," "age-old conflict," "masked Arab
rioters" etc. And even as the world watched the supposedly "unforgettable"
footage of an innocent boy, Rami al-Durrah, being gunned down in cold blood,
the Israeli side is still permitted to set the news agenda with its arrogant
ultimatums and threats, its blame-the-victim rhetoric. And even though
everyone knows that there have been more than 2500 Palestinian casualties in
the popular uprising for the democracy and liberation, Barak is still allowed
to appear as if he's the only leader interested in maintaining the peace.
Indeed, Israel is interested in "maintaining peace"-a peace of Palestinian
surrender and submission which would allow them to quietly slip out of the
international headlines, so they can continue to steal land unchecked. This
includes the land of those other Palestinians-the so-called "Israeli-Arabs"
whose situation is less publicized.
Meanwhile, the US promotes this sort of submissive "peace" not only in
Israel, but all over the Arab world where US-friendly dictatorships rule with
an iron fist (and American-made weaponry). The popular demonstrations that
have erupted in Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan are not a cause for American
elation and joy as they are in Yugoslavia. No, these demonstrations are
viewed as a "de-stabilization" and a threat to US interests in the region.
This sort of self-serving hypocrisy is the very reason that the US government
lacks credibility among the oppressed people of the world.
In the last two weeks, both the Serbians and the Arabs have demonstrated
their inalienable right to take their rulers to task. Of the two
"revolutions" only the Palestinian one was met with bloody repression.
Courageously facing down the most sophisticated military power in the region,
Palestinians have been willing to die for the cause of self-determination in
their homeland. The question, then, begs to be answered-how long will this
US-Israel friendship stand in the way of the legitimate rights of the
Palestinian people? And how long will the corporate media continue to act as
the mouthpiece of the Pentagon and the State Department- regurgitating all
the usual cliches, in an effort not to inform the public, but rather to
conceal the true history of the Zionist conquest of Palestine?
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From: JSalloum@aol.com
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 00:07:33 EDT
Subject: Intifada 3
October 25, 2000
Al-Aqsa Intifada
By Noam Chomsky
After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime
Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the
region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
children, often by "excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which
neither the lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger,
resulting in unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a
detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US. The ratio of
Palestinian to Israeli dead was then about 15-1, reflecting the resources of
force available.
Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar: they
conform to the "final status map" presented by the US-Israel as the basis for
the Camp David negotiations that collapsed in July. This plan, extending
US-Israeli rejectionist proposals of earlier years, called for cantonization
of the territories that Israel had conquered in 1967, with mechanisms to
ensure that usable land and resources (primarily water) remain largely in
Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and brutal
Palestinian authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to
indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the
Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the most
obvious analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include Nablus
and other Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in Ramallah, and a
southern canton in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain isolated. Palestinians
would be effectively cut off from Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life.
Similar arrangements are likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the southern
coastal region and a small settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the
recent atrocities), which is hardly more than an excuse for a large military
presence and roads splitting the Strip below Gaza City. These proposals
formalize the vast settlement and construction programs that Israel has been
conducting, thanks to munificent US aid, with increasing energy since the US
was able to implement its version of the "peace process" after the Gulf war.
For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25 commentary;
and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom, Oct.
10.
The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to this
project. Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of violence
began. Tensions, always high, were raised when the Barak government
authorized a visit by Ariel Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious
sites (Al-Aqsa) on a Thursday (Sept. 28). Sharon is the very symbol of
Israeli state terror and aggression, with a rich record of atrocities going
back to 1953. Sharon's announced purpose was to demonstrate "Jewish
sovereignty" over the al-Aqsa compound, but as the veteran correspondent
Graham Usher points out, the "al-Aqsa intifada," as Palestinians call it, was
not initiated by Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive and intimidating
police and military presence that Barak introduced the following day, the day
of prayers. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people streamed
out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded. Whatever
Barak's purpose, there could hardly have been a more efficient way to set the
stage for the shocking atrocities of the following weeks.
The same can be said about the failed negotiations, which focused on
Jerusalem, a condition observed strictly by US commentary. Possibly Israeli
sociologist Baruch Kimmerling was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution
to this problem "could have been reached in five minutes," but he is right to
say that "by any diplomatic logic [it] should have been the easiest issue to
solve (Ha'aretz, Oct. 4). It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want
to suppress what they are doing in the occupied territories, which is far
more important. Why did Arafat agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the
leadership of the Arab states regard the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have
little problem with the Bantustan-style settlement, but cannot overlook
administration of the religious sites, fearing the reaction of their own
populations. Nothing could be better calculated to set off a confrontation
with religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as centuries of experience
reveal.
The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the US-Israeli demands are
to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a harsher
form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely. The outlines are
in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the Allon
Plan), and variants that have been proposed since by both political groupings
(the Sharon Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is important to
recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but implemented, with
the support of the US. That support has been decisive since 1971, when
Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had initiated (UN
Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral rejection of
Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the "Oslo
process." Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from history in the
US, it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They are not
controversial, only evaded.
As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar US-Israeli
rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,
telecommunications, and other services that are doled out in meager rations
to the Palestinian population, who are now under virtual siege. It should be
recalled that independent development was ruthlessly barred by the military
regime from 1967, leaving the people in destitution and dependency, a process
that has worsened considerably during the US-run "Oslo process." One reason
is the "closures" regularly instituted, must brutally by the more dovish
Labor-based governments. As discussed by another outstanding journalist,
Amira Hass, this policy was initiated by the Rabin government "years before
Hamas had planned suicide attacks, [and] has been perfected over the years,
especially since the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority." An
efficient mechanism of strangulation and control, closure has been
accompanied by the importation of an essential commodity to replace the cheap
and exploited Palestinian labor on which much of the economy relies: hundreds
of thousands of illegal immigrants from around the world, many of them
victims of the "neoliberal reforms" of the recent years of "globalization."
Surviving in misery and without rights, they are regularly described as a
virtual slave labor force in the Israeli press. The current Barak proposal is
to extend this program, reducing still further the prospects even for mere
survival for the Palestinians.
A major barrier to the program is the opposition of the Israeli business
community, which relies on a captive Palestinian market for some $2.5 billion
in annual exports, and has "forged links with Palestinian security officials"
and Arafat's "economic adviser, enabling them to carve out monopolies with
official PA consent" (Financial Times, Oct. 22; also NYT, same day). They
have also hoped to set up industrial zones in the territories, transferring
pollution and exploiting a cheap labor force in maquiladora-style
installations owned by Israeli enterprises and the Palestinian elite, who are
enriching themselves in the time-honored fashion.
Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a plan, though they
are a natural extension of what has come before. Insofar as they are
implemented, they would extend the project of "invisible transfer" that has
been underway for many years, and that makes more sense than outright "ethnic
cleansing" (as we call the process when carried out by official enemies).
People compelled to abandon hope and offered no opportunities for meaningful
existence will drift elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so. The plans,
which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist movement from its
origins (across the ideological spectrum), were articulated in internal
discussion by Israeli government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic
cleansing was underway: their expectation was that the refugees "would be
crushed" and "die," while "most of them would turn into human dust and the
waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab
countries." Current plans, whether imposed by coercive diplomacy or outright
force, have similar goals. They are not unrealistic if they can rely on the
world-dominant power and its intellectual classes.
The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass, in Israel's most
prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18). Seven years after the Declaration of
Principles in September 1993 -- which foretold this outcome for anyone who
chose to see -- "Israel has security and administrative control" of most of
the West Bank and 20% of the Gaza Strip. It has been able "to double the
number of settlers in 10 years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue its
discriminatory policy of cutting back water quotas for three million
Palestinians, to prevent Palestinian development in most of the area of the
West Bank, and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in
a network of bypass roads meant for Jews only. During these days of strict
internal restriction of movement in the West Bank, one can see how carefully
each road was planned: So that 200,000 Jews have freedom of movement, about
three million Palestinians are locked into their Bantustans until they submit
to Israeli demands. The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks is
the natural outcome of seven years of lying and deception, just as the first
Intifada was the natural outcome of direct Israeli occupation."
The settlement and construction programs continue, with US support, whoever
may be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz noted that two governments -- Rabin
and Barak -- had declared that settlement was "frozen," in accord with the
dovish image preferred in the US and by much of the Israeli left. They made
use of the "freezing" to intensify settlement, including economic inducements
for the secular population, automatic grants for ultra-religious settlers,
and other devices, which can be carried out with little protest while "the
lesser of two evils" happens to be making the decisions, a pattern hardly
unfamiliar elsewhere. "There is freezing and there is reality," the report
observes caustically. The reality is that settlement in the occupied
territories has grown over four times as fast as in Israeli population
centers, continuing -- perhaps accelerating -- under Barak. Settlement brings
with it large infrastructure projects designed to integrate much of the
region within Israel, while leaving Palestinians isolated, apart from
"Palestinian roads" that are travelled at one's peril.
Another journalist with an outstanding record, Danny Rubinstein, points out
that "readers of the Palestinian papers get the impression (and rightly so)
that activity in the settlements never stops. Israeli is constantly building,
expanding and reinforcing the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel is always grabbing homes and lands in areas beyond the 1967 lines -
and of course, this is all at the expense of the Palestinians, in order to
limit them, push them into a corner and then out. In other words, the goal is
to eventually dispossess them of their homeland and their capital, Jerusalem"
(Ha'aretz, October 23).
Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are largely shielded from
the unwelcome facts, though not entirely so. In the US, it is far more
important for the population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious reasons:
the economic and military programs rely crucially on US support, which is
domestically unpopular and would be far more so if its purposes were known.
To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting and killing, the
defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported "the largest purchase of military
helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade," an agreement with the US
to provide Israel with 35 Blackhawk military helicopters and spare parts at a
cost of $525 million, along with jet fuel, following the purchase shortly
before of patrol aircraft and Apache attack helicopters. These are "the
newest and most advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US
inventory," the Jerusalem Post adds. It would be unfair to say that those
providing the gifts cannot discover the fact. In a database search, David
Peterson found that they were reported in the Raleigh (North Carolina) press.
The sale of military helicopters was condemned by Amnesty International (Oct.
19), because these "US-supplied helicopters have been used to violate the
human rights of Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the recent conflict in
the region." Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced cretinism.
Israel has been condemned internationally (the US abstaining) for "excessive
use of force," in a "disproportionate reaction" to Palestinian violence. That
includes even rare condemnations by the ICRC, specifically, for attacks on at
least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, Oct 4). Israel's response is that it is
being unfairly singled out for criticism. The response is entirely accurate.
Israel is employing official US doctrine, known here as "the Powell
doctrine," though it is of far more ancient vintage, tracing back centuries:
Use massive force in response to any perceived threat. Official Israeli
doctrine allows "the full use of weapons against anyone who endangers lives
and especially at anyone who shoots at our forces or at Israelis" (Israeli
military legal adviser Daniel Reisner, FT, Oct. 6). Full use of force by a
modern army includes tanks, helicopter gunships, sharpshooters aiming at
civilians (often children), etc. US weapons sales "do not carry a stipulation
that the weapons can't be used against civilians," a Pentagon official said;
he "acknowleged however that anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters are
not traditionally considered tools for crowd control" -- except by those
powerful enough to get away with it, under the protective wings of the
reigning superpower. "We cannot second-guess an Israeli commander who calls
in a Cobra (helicopter) gunship because his troops are under attack," another
US official said (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 3). Accordingly, such
killing machines must be provided in an unceasing flow.
It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt standard US military
doctrine, which has left a toll too awesome to record, including very recent
years. The US and Israel are, of course, not alone in adopting this doctrine,
and it is sometimes even condemned: namely, when adopted by enemies targeted
for destruction. A recent example is the response of Serbia when its
territory (as the US insists it is) was attacked by Albanian-based
guerrillas, killing Serb police and civilians and abducting civilians
(including Albanians) with the openly-announced intent of eliciting a
"disproportionate response" that would arouse Western indignation, then NATO
military attack. Very rich documentation from US, NATO, and other Western
sources is now available, most of it produced in an effort to justify the
bombing. Assuming these sources to be credible, we find that the Serbian
response -- while doubtless "disproportionate" and criminal, as alleged --
does not compare with the standard resort to the same doctrine by the US and
its clients, Israel included.
In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that "If Palestinians
were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions
led by the United States [which is not accurate, unfortunately]. Its
development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of
apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny
fraction of its own country, in self-administered `bantustans', with `whites'
monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black
population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully
under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs -
flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending -
would be recognised as scandalous too" (Observer, Guardian, Oct. 15).
Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose vision has not been
constrained by the doctrinal blinders imposed for many years. It remains a
major task to remove them in the most important country. That is a
prerequisite to any constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and
destruction, terrible enough before our eyes, and with long-term implications
that are not pleasant to contemplate.
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From: JSalloum@aol.com
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 13:23:26 EDT
Subject: Cyber attack
Arabs unify in cyber-war' against Israel
Hackers crash Israel's most high-profile
websites
Ranwa Yehia
Daily Star staff
Arab internet users all over the world succeeded in
crippling two major Israeli websites on Wednesday in
an attempt to counter-attack Israel's efforts to
overload Hizbullah websites.
Alerted by an article published in The Daily Star on
Tuesday detailing how Israelis have established a
site to attack Hizbullah's, Arab users began a
counter-offensive. By 1pm Wednesday, the main
Israeli government website (www.israel.org) and the
Israeli Foreign Ministry's website
(www.israel-mfa.gov.il) had been downed by hackers.
The Jerusalem Post website issued a report at 2.10pm
confirming that the Israeli Foreign Ministry website
was down.
"Spam (overloading) and hacker assaults have also
been detected on a number of other government sites
as well as the IDF (Israel Defense Force) website.
Ministry sources told Israel Radio the attackers
were traced to "Islamic internet sites," according
to the Jerusalem Post.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said: "The site
itself was not damaged, but at the moment, no one
can access it."
The official said the website attack could be traced
to a "pro-Palestinian and pro-Shiite Muslim" website
in the US that urged internet users to flood the
Foreign Ministry site.
Several local internet service providers (ISPs) had
published The Daily Star article early Wednesday.
Activity was detected soon afterward, with the
article being widely circulated through e-mail.
Chat rooms frequented by Arab users throughout the
world were also mobilized, with information about
how to attack Israeli websites posted and updates on
which websites have already been targeted.
"If we continue like this, we should arrive at a
time when an Israeli website is crippled every hour.
This is our new battle," said one internet user who,
like others interviewed, requested anonymity.
Another internet programmer said that the attack
against Israeli websites was more professional than
the attack staged by Israeli supporters over the
past two weeks to cripple Hizbullah websites.
"While the Israelis and their supporters simply
overloaded Hizbullah websites and those related to
the resistance and intifada to eventually cripple
them, our attack was destructive," he said.
The programmer explained that Lebanese hackers
detected the security loophole on the Israeli
websites, allowing them to have full control over
all data on these sites.
"Hence, all data was deleted," the programmer said.
Another difference is that while it requires
thousands of Israeli supporters to overload a
Hizbullah or resistance related website, it can take
one person using one single dial-up connection to
hack and crash an Israeli website.
"Both are illegal, but this is war," the programmer
said.
By 10pm Wednesday, the two Israeli websites were
still down.
The Jerusalem Post reported earlier Wednesday that
"the newest Arab target is Israel's virtual
government."
The English-language daily quoted an Israeli Foreign
Ministry official as saying that the ministry's site
was "neutralized for several hours late Monday night
by a flood of intentional web traffic, most likely
e-mail messages and requests."
The attack has caused the near-total collapse of
[Image] Israel's ISP system, according to the Jerusalem
Post.
Arab internet users are making sure they stage their
attacks from individual PCs or internet cafes to
reduce the possibilities of an Israeli
counter-attack that would cripple their systems.
One such person, identifying himself as Walid, said
he intended to hack the Knesset server late
Wednesday night. "We'll target and hack Israeli
websites one by one. This will continue," he said.
Walid added that the attacks may get fiercer, with
an e-mail war between Israel and Arabs seeing an
exchange of viruses designed to crash systems.
More websites are being built to attack Israeli
sites. One is www.ummah.net/unity/defend/. Its front
page has Hizbullah's logo with the word "UNITY."
Similar to an earlier website,
www.members.tripod.com/irsa2000, it instructs users
to target Israeli websites by pressing on a button
that would initiate hits on these sites every second
in an attempt to overload and eventually cripple
them.
An e-mail circulated about the website urges users
to log on and help defend Hizbullah.
Hackers have since broken into a Hizbullah website
which was downed last week, www.hizballa.org, and
replaced its home page with an image of an Israeli
flag and an instrumental recording of "Hatikva," the
Israeli national anthem.
The website's front page said: "This page was
uploaded to protest against the Arabic attacks in
the past few days."
Related stories
* Israeli website tries to shut down Hizbullah's
DS 26/10/00
Copyright© 2000 The Daily Star. All rights reserved.
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