Cyber-attackers target UK Jewish newspaper
By now, Jewish organizations are accustomed to having to deal with all sorts of idiocy–sometimes merely annoying and sometimes downright dangerous–coming from those who oppose the existence of the Jewish state.
“Cyber-attacks” are nothing new — some clever anti-Israel kid hacks his way into a Jewish or Israeli website and scrawls something about Palestinians being wonderful or Israelis being awful. More than once, they’ve been somewhat clever (if you’re going to be a vandal, might as well be an interesting one…).
The latest victim of such a prank is the website of the Jewish Chronicle, the newspaper of the Jewish community in the U.K.:
Hackers managed to place a message on the home page in support of “Palestinian Mujahaeeds”.
The site was immediately suspended while technicians investigated if the site’s security had been breached.
Fortunately, they quickly established that no serious breach had taken place and no damage was done. Early indications are that the perpetrator was operating from a computer in Turkey.
This really puts the lie to those who claim that there’s no anti-Semitism to be found among those who oppose the Jewish state. If so, why go after the newspaper for the British Jewish community? It’s not an Israeli site. This is particularly odd given how tepid support for Israel can be among English Jews. Earlier this week, Israeli uber-blogger David Bogner wrote about a trip to the UK:
So it came as a bit of a surprise when I found the tiny U.K. Jewish community (less than 300,000 strong as of the last census), to be absolutely absent from public discourse in support of Israel. In England, there seems to be a political price to pay for being pro-Israel… and if anything, there seems to be value on the side of those who are critical of Israel.
As I mentioned in a previous post, Jews in the U.K. seem to be fairly equally split between being actively critical of the Jewish State, and being apologetically supportive of it (albeit in the safe privacy of their homes and synagogues).
Intimidation has its…
Read More » Comments (0) »Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 10:45 AM | Stand For Israel
We like his tune!
Pianist Evgeny Kissin
It’s no secret that many believe that the news division of the BBC, the UK’s prestigious broadcasting network, is wildly biased against Israel — sometimes to the point that it lacks credibility.
Unfortunately, the arts and media industries tend to follow the elite conventional wisdom (which, ever nuanced, goes something like: “Israel bad”) and rarely provides any sort of balance. So we were delighted to hear that Evgeny Kissin, 38, a child prodigy in his native Russia now widely regarded as one of the greatest living pianists, has accused the BBC of “slander and bias” against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as “painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda.”
Kissin, who became a British citizen in 2002, said he intends from now on to speak out against media bias against Israel, which he sees as both fueling and being fueled by anti-Semitism.
H/t: The Jewish Chronicle’s ever-interesting Miriam Shaviv.
Comments (0) »Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 3:01 PM | Stand For Israel
Man screaming “kill Jews” hauled off flight
MIAMI – A man who described himself as a Palestinian and said he wanted to “kill all the Jews” was hauled off a Detroit-bound Delta Air Lines flight in Miami and arrested, Reuters is reporting:
The plane was taxiing away from the terminal at Miami International Airport on Wednesday night when 43-year-old Mansor Mohammad Asad of Toledo, Ohio, began making loud anti-Semitic comments and chanting, apparently in Arabic, Miami-Dade police said in a statement.
“I’m Palestinian and I want (to) kill all Jews,” he said, according to witnesses.
The pilot returned the aircraft to the terminal and a Taser device was used to “neutralize” Asad after he charged an arresting officer, the police statement said.
We’re pleasantly surprised that that actually got him kicked off the plane. They probably worried that he’d snuck a bottle of soda on with him.
Comments (0) »Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 11:47 AM | Stand For Israel
Historic synagogue in Crete burned down by arsonists
Arsonists nearly burned down a synagogue dating to the medieval era in the Greek city of Hania on the island of Crete this week. The historic synagogue, which functions as a house of worship and cultural center, nearly burned to the ground after the unknown assailtants set fire to a wooden staircase outside the building.
The fire was set at around 1 a.m. early Wednesday, but a neighbor who was awake at the time noticed the smoke and called authorities. The fire reached neither the Torah scrolls nor the library, which holds roughly 1,600 rare books and manuscripts. The staircase that was set aflame led to the second-story women’s section of the main sanctuary.
The Jewish community is Crete is an ancient one, as detailed in the synagogue’s website, dating back nearly two millennia. The Etz-Hayyim Synagogue was restored in the late 1990s after years of neglect in the wake of the Second World War. The nearly 300 members of the Hania Jewish community were shipped out by the Nazi invaders in 1944, and died when their ship was sunk in transit by an Allied torpedo.
Comments (1) »Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 6:03 PM | Stand For Israel
Holocaust museum attacker dies in jail
The 89-year-0ld white supremacist charged with gunning down a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington last June died this morning at a North Carolina prison hospital, CNN reports.
James von Brunn was indicted by a federal grand jury in July on charges he murdered Stephen Tyrone Johns in the June 10 attack. Johns had worked as a guard at the museum for six years.
“He was just very sick,” said public defender A.J. Kramer of his client’s death. Von Brunn was shot during the attack when officers returned fire.
Von Brunn, a self-avowed white supremacist, was a known Holocaust denier who created an anti-Semitic Web site called “The Holy Western Empire.”
Comments (0) »Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 4:45 PM | Stand For Israel
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