Middle East cyber war escalates: Saudi hackers disrupt Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al , Israeli hackers bring down Arab monetary sites

(Eye) Pro-Palestinian computer hackers disrupted the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al, Israel's national carrier, on Monday, escalating a Middle East cyber war.

(Telegraph) The distributed denial-of-service attacks, which also targeted three Israeli banks, were the latest salvo in a month-long offensive between Arab and Jewish hackers determined to give the Middle East conflict an online dimension.
Monday's hacking incident caused the stock exchange's website to perform slowly, while El Al's online services were unavailable for more than an hour.
Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a group of hackers, claiming to be based in Saudi Arabia, which identifies itself by the name "Nightmare".
It came days after a rival Israeli hacking group called "Israel Defenders" published what it said were the credit card details of hundreds of Saudis. Nightmare had carried out a similar stunt after hacking an Israeli sports website.
The self-proclaimed head of Nightmare, who identifies himself as "0xOmar", boasted on the microblogging website Twitter that he would never be caught.
"No one is this world going to arrest me," he wrote. "It's impossible to find me and I'll keep attacking Israel. Just stay and watch."
Setting himself up against 0xOmar is "0xOmer", the leader of Israel Defenders, who says he is 17. 0xOmer says his counter-campaign has been joined by "7ukk1", allegedly a soldier in Israeli military intelligence. They claim they are poised to release the credit card details of 300,000 more Saudi nationals.
A second Jewish hacker, Hannibal, has joined the fray, publishing details to allow web users to break into the Facebook accounts of 20,000 Arab users. He claims to have the bank account details of 10 million Iranian and Saudi nationals, which he will release if Israel comes under further cyber-attack.
More...

'Israel Defenders' hackers post in forum that attacks are response to "lame" Saudi attack on Israelis.

(JPost) Israeli hackers said they brought down the official websites of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange on Tuesday in retaliation for a denial of service attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange the previous day.
Both websites appeared to be offline following the announcement by the hackers.
An Israeli hacker told The Jerusalem Post that members of the Internet group Israel Defenders were behind the attack.
They said in a forum message that they acted “because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites,” noting the denial of service attacks against TASE and El Al, as well as three Israeli banks on Monday. They signed their message with the name “IDF Team.” The hackers warned “this is only the beginning,” saying “there may be disruption to the [Saudi] government’s stock exchange site” as well.
“If the lame attacks from Saudi Arabia will continue, we will move to the next level, which will disable these sites longer term,” they said, adding that the damage could last for weeks or even months.
Also Tuesday, an Israeli hacker named “Anonymous 972” published the e-mail details, including passwords, of 89 Saudi university students.
“Usually we do not like to hurt innocent sites, but there is now a cyber war, and every war has victims,” the hacker wrote.
“Every time an Israeli site get[s] hacked, the same thing will happen to Saudi sites.”
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HELLO?: Russia: Black Widow attempted New Year Moscow attack but blew herself up by mistake

Feel-good story of the day. (eye)(Telegraph) A "Black Widow" suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year's Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources.
The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.
Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else.
She was at her Moscow safe house at the time getting ready with two accomplices, both of whom survived and were seen fleeing the scene.
Islamist terrorists in Russia often use cheap unused mobile phones as detonators. The bomber's handler, who is usually watching their charge, sends the bomber a text message in order to set off his or her explosive belt at the moment when it is thought they can inflict maximum casualties.
The phones are usually kept switched off until the very last minute but in this case, Russian security sources believe, the terrorists were careless.
The dead woman has not been identified. Her handler, a 24-year-old woman from the internal Muslim Russian republic of Dagestan, has been named as Zeinat Suyunova. Her husband is apparently still serving time in jail for himself being a member of a radical Islamist terror group.
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SPAM... isn't that pork? uh oh!

Rick Perry gets Turkey right

(Israel Matzav) At the Republican Presidential debate in South Carolina on Monday, former Texas Governor Rick Perry called a spade, a spade. He slammed Turkey for being governed by Islamic terrorists and urged NATO to expel the Islamic state. The Turks are furious (Hat Tip: Joshua I).

Perry made the remarks when he was asked by moderator of the program whether Turkey should still belong in NATO, given that “the murder rate of women has increased 1,400 percent, press freedom has declined to the level of Russia, Prime Minister of Turkey has embraced Hamas and Turkey threatened military action against both Israel and Cyprus since the Islamist-oriented party took over.”
“Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then, yes, not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it,” Perry boldly claimed.
“And you go to zero with foreign aid for all of those countries. It does not make any difference who they are. You go to zero with foreign aid and you have the conversation about do they have America’s best interests in mind. When you have countries that are moving far away from the country that I lived in back in the 1970s as a pilot of the US Air Force, that was our ally, they worked with us. But today, we don’t see that,” Perry said.

And in case anyone didn't get it, a Perry spokesperson explained it.

Victoria Coates, his foreign policy advisor, said that some view the leaders of Turkey as Islamic terrorists due to their support of Hamas and the flotilla against Israel, according to ABC News.
“The governor was responding to the questioners references to violence against women and to association with Hamas, I think both of which are things that many people do associate as he said with Islamic terrorists,” Coates was quoted as telling reporters by ABC News. “He was referring to those things, and while he would welcome the opportunity to work with Turkey on regional issues like Syria or Iraq, this kind of behavior on the part of that country is disturbing and I think we should concerned about it.”
Asked if the leaders of Turkey have performed any actions which place them in the category of Islamic terrorists, Coates responded: “What he said was that many people associate that kind of behavior with that of Islamic terrorists. I think also their support for the flotilla against Israel this fall. It's deeply concerning, and I think it's something any future American president needs to be aware of."

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Outside the Beltway).

It probably bears mentioning that Daniel Pipes questioned whether Turkey belongs in NATO back in 2009.

Maybe I will have another look at this guy. He isn't what the media is making him out to be. He is a man who is merely trying to get his Conservative and Zionist credentials back when it was revealed that he had allowed in Texas some textbooks to be printed that said Israel is the cause of the friction between Jews and Muslims. It sure pissed me off... but I think he is learning... give him a little credit.

Hindustan Times calls on India to go public with Israel ties

(EOZ) From the Hindustan Times:

India and Israel is the bilateral relationship that dare not speak its name. If one were to go by New Delhi's official rhetoric, nothing has changed between the two countries. India continues to casually denounce Israel on the Palestinian issue, keeps mum when Iran or others promise to destroy the Jewish State, and still tends to vote against Israel in the United Nations or other multilateral fora. If one were to go by substance - security, trade and technology - there are few bilateral relations to match it in the world. Israel can be counted on to be the first or second largest provider of arms to India every year. Bilateral trade and investment runs into several billions of dollars on the civilian side. Israel, one of the great tech hubs of the world, is a close partner of India in software, pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. It says something about the trust that exists between the two countries that their closest links are in the most sensitive of areas: intelligence, counterterrorism, defence technology and even nuclear weaponry.
Bringing the public and private relationship with Israel in sync has been a particularly tortuous business with the UPA government. The government's first term was hostage to the ideological demands of the leftwing parties - the political formation most hostile to Israel. Half of its second term had to pass before New Delhi sent the foreign minister on a State visit. A prime ministerial or presidential visit, in either direction, continues to be the stuff of dreams - and solely because New Delhi has political nightmares at the thought. This is unbecoming of India: a constant and running act of hypocrisy by a country that sees itself as deserving of global influence and emulation. Israel has repeatedly stepped up to the plate when India is under threat, most notably during the Kargil crisis.
Some will shrug that this is the reality of India. But the evidence says this 'reality' is actually a bouquet of illusions. The most common claim is that a more public relationship will cause an eruption among the Muslim population. The truth is that an Indian Muslim is as pragmatic as the next one and has better things to worry about than the historical conflicts of the Levant. When politicians have raised the Israel-Palestine issue, they have come up empty-handed. The other claim is that India will lose standing with the Arab world. The opposite has proven to be the case: countries like Saudi Arabia sought to strengthen relations with India in part because the latter normalised relations with Israel. India's relations with Israel are spreading into other areas of existential importance to the country. Israel is a key partner in agriculture, and being the world's most-efficient liquid recycler, in water as well. If Israel becomes a major natural gas exporter in a few years, there will almost no missing links in the relationship. And the present official stance will lose any semblance of pragmatism and be merely a veil of the absurd.

I had asked Danny Ayalon about Israel's relations with India last month; he said they were "very good" but unfortunately didn't elaborate.

To quote Golda... what took so long?

Wikipedia makes unprecedented protest. Blacks out world for a day.

(Vlad Tepes) Protesting Obama’s new copyright laws, Wikipedia plans to black out the world starting at midnight Zulu.
As this law will apply to pretty much everyone and everything, it is clearly meant for selective enforcement. This would mean that the normally left leaning wikipedia has far less to fear than, say for example, anyone critical of the teachings or effects of Islam might. So please read as many articles here as you can. Copy them for emails whatever you can do if you believe that opposition to the largest social experiment of all time should be allowed an opposing voice. Ours I wager, will be removed sometime quite soon.
Another fine example of soft totalitarianism?
Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.
This will be the first time the English Wikipedia has ever staged a public protest of this nature, and it’s a decision that wasn’t lightly made. Here’s how it’s been described by the three Wikipedia administrators who formally facilitated the community’s discussion. From the public statement, signed by User:NuclearWarfare, User:Risker and User:Billinghurst:

It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

On careful review of this discussion, the closing administrators note the broad-based support for action from Wikipedians around the world, not just from within the United States. The primary objection to a global blackout came from those who preferred that the blackout be limited to readers from the United States, with the rest of the world seeing a simple banner notice instead. We also noted that roughly 55% of those supporting a blackout preferred that it be a global one, with many pointing to concerns about similar legislation in other nations. 

Click to continue:

These people who think ideas and arrangements of data constitutes ownership are information neanderthals. We live in a new world. Our ideas are no longer owned. We profit by the swiftness of our information. People go to my blog... not because I write all my own things. They come to my blog because I'm informed and know where to get relevant information. This is no different then a code warrior of LINIX in the public domain. These people are not valuable because you buy the software from them... these people are valuable because they are the specialists who you pay a consulting fee because the information to them is accessible in ways that it wouldn't be to me or you. People who think that information can be stolen are fools. (mind you this is limited to the idea that it isn't violent information). Are you reading this blog because you think I wrote the above part? No... I got it from Vlad Tepes and knew enough about the issue to talk about it. When I was at Carnegie Mellon University I had a teacher who later accused me of copying and pasting code in a court where she also accused me of identity theft. The truth is... I was copying and pasting code.... and using the code as blocks of information to build something different, but this "feminist" was too narrow minded to understand how I was working and applied her interventionism. She also accused me of cyberstalking and I was facing four felonies. Funny the way it didn't pan out the way she had hoped when the CMU records got out.

Calling Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney: Will you meet Avigdor Lieberman?

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is scheduled to visit the United States next week. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has decided to leave town in honor of the occasion, and no one else in the Obama administration is willing to meet Lieberman. The word on the street is that the Obama administration, which was willing to meet with Ahmadinejad and Assad without preconditions, is unwilling to meet with the foreign minister of its erstwhile ally, and has effectively declared him persona non grata, saying that no one wants to be photographed with him or with what he represents.
Here's a report from Israel's Channel 2 news, which was aired on Monday night. The report is in Hebrew, so I apologize in advance to the Hebrew-impaired. In the report that I summarized above, Channel 2 also says that American spokespeople are treating Lieberman as if he's a representative of a terror organization, and suggests that Prime Minister Netanyahu ought to intervene because this is a breach of protocol.
Let's go to the videotape.

I wonder how many of the Republican candidates for President would be willing to meet with Lieberman and attack the Obama administration for the manner in which it is treating him. I know that some of you who read this blog (and some people who follow me on Twitter) are connected to various Republican campaigns. Anyone willing to make the suggestion?

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

I think Avigdor Lieberman is the one man I know who can can related to my experience on facebook and twitter with the feminist haters. oooh... blocked a again. Oh well.

Slanderous essay wins Carnegie Mellon University award in Pittsburgh

Ben Zoma says:
Who is wise?
The one who learns from every person…
Who is brave?
The one who subdues his negative inclination…
Who is rich?
The one who is appreciates what he has…
Who is honored?
The one who gives honor to others…
(Talmud – Avot 4:1)
(fresnozionism.org)I lived for some years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is not a bad place at all, although the winters are very cold and once the sun didn’t come out for 43 days (I counted). It has several top -notch universities, including the University of Pittsburgh where I was a graduate student, and Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU).
Every year CMU runs a contest for student writing about racial issues, on the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. This year’s high school winners were a African-American girl, Erika Drain, and a Jewish boy, Jesse Lieberfeld. They are both juniors at the Winchester Thurston School, a private school whose main campus is located in the city’s Shadyside neighborhood. Tuition for the 11th grade is $23,600 at Winchester Thurston, so one assumes that they have only the best teachers and facilities available to them.
Their essays were published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, here. Erika Drain’s, about being called “not black enough” because of her academic achievement, was perceptive and nuanced. Jesse Lieberfeld’s was notable for several reasons:

• His clearly expressed disdain for Jews and Judaism
• His completely one-sided understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• The fact that his parents, teachers, rabbi, etc. didn’t succeed (or try) to introduce at least a bit of reality into his thinking
• The fact that CMU chose this offensive piece as one of the top two high school essays

He begins with an arguably antisemitic statement:

I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world — and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering.

One would think that someone along the way would have explained to him that normative Judaism — liberal or Orthodox — does not teach that Jews are superior to others, only that they bear a greater moral burden, that of following the commandments. It’s unfortunate if he or his family are intellectual snobs or enjoy self-pity, but the Jewish people are not responsible for his psychological issues.

…as I came to learn more about our so-called “conflict” with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. “Genocide” almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms. Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides, that no one was really to blame, or simply that it was a “difficult situation.”

Nobody told him, apparently, that Operation Cast Lead came after some 8,000 rockets were fired at random by Hamas into Israeli towns. Nobody explained to him about the Second Intifada, the suicide bombings and drive-by shootings. Nobody told him about the surprise attack in 1973, the plans to wipe out the Jewish residents of Israel in 1967, the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in 1948. Nobody mentioned the 800,000 Jews kicked out of Arab countries after the War of Independence. Nobody explained how the Arab world had been trying to extirpate the Jewish presence from the Middle East for at least the last 100 years.
No, they just told him that “there were faults on both sides.”
And the connection to Dr. King?

In that moment, I realized how similar the two struggles were — like the white radicals [sic] of that era, we controlled the lives of another people whom we abused daily, and no one could speak out against us. It was too politically incorrect to do so. We had suffered too much, endured too many hardships, and overcome too many losses to be criticized. I realized then that I was in no way part of a “conflict” — the term “Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” was no more accurate than calling the Civil Rights Movement the “Caucasian/African-American Conflict.”
In both cases, the expression was a blatant euphemism: it gave the impression that this was a dispute among equals and that both held an equal share of the blame. However, in both, there was clearly an oppressor and an oppressed, and I felt horrified at the realization that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists. I was part of a group that killed while praising its own intelligence and reason. I was part of a delusion.

No one could speak out? Apparently Mr. Lieberfeld was not only allowed to speak out, but was given an award for it.
Concerning his absurd analogy, I would ask him if black people fired missiles into American cities? If they made a habit of blowing up buses on our streets? If African-Americans regularly proclaimed their desire to rid the country of whites and were supported in this by 23 neighboring nations, one of which was developing nuclear weapons? If black heroes, instead of Dr. King, were people like Palestinian hero Dalal Mughrabi, who led a bloody terrorist attack that killed 35 Israelis, including 13 children? Talk about delusions!
Was his expensive education so poor that he is unaware of the differences between the struggle of African-Americans to overcome official and unofficial racism in their country, and the viciously racist 100-year effort to kick the Jewish people out of their ancestral homeland?
Did it occur to him that his sources of ‘information’ might possibly be biased? Apparently not.
Finally, Mr. Lieberfeld gives Judaism one last chance — and it fails the test:

I decided to make one last appeal to my religion. If it could not answer my misgivings, no one could.
The next time I attended a service, there was an open question-and-answer session about any point of our religion. I wanted to place my dilemma in as clear and simple terms as I knew how. I thought out my exact question over the course of the 17-minute cello solo that was routinely played during service. Previously, I had always accepted this solo as just another part of the program, yet now it seemed to capture the whole essence of our religion: intelligent and well-crafted on paper, yet completely oblivious to the outside world (the soloist did not have the faintest idea of how masterfully he was putting us all to sleep).
When I was finally given the chance to ask a question, I asked: “I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?” I was met with a few angry glares from some of the older men, but the rabbi answered me.
“It is a terrible thing, isn’t it?” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.”

I’d like to believe the rabbi did better than that, and that Lieberfeld was just not paying attention. But today, who knows?
I blame the family, the teachers, the rabbi, and CMU’s selection committee who validated this exercise in ignorant slander. But the responsibility for what he said lies with only one person, Mr. Lieberfeld himself. He’s old enough to accept it.
I suggest that he reread the words of Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma at the beginning of this piece, and then learn the truth about Israel — and some humility, while he’s at it. Dr. King certainly would have approved.

Update [2008 PDT]: Elder of Ziyon also discussed this essay in “An open letter to 17-year old Jesse Lieberfeld.”
Update [2011 PDT]: Jesse Lieberfeld is the son of Daniel Lieberfeld, an associate professor at Duquesne University, another well-known Pittsburgh institution. Daniel Lieberfeld has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see a list of his publications here), and teaches an undergraduate course on it. From what I’ve been able to find so far, he seems to take a center-left perspective.

...my alumni email simonstudio@alumni.cmu.edu went down last week... I had such a nice talk with the Alumni house, but now I read this the next day? I try to stay positive, I hear there are opportunities for those with the diploma I have. I have not seen it. My brother is making films instead of going to college... he's doing what they can merely talk about. Guess which one of us is living in our parent's attic? I'll give you a hint... the one of us who doesn't have the diploma. Perhaps this is why. My Jewish family goes back to the very first class of Carnegie Tech. My great great grandfather by the name of Sivitz was there in the beginning of the 20th century. My great great great grandfather Sivitz (the father of the boy who was in the first class) was the orthodox rabbi in Pittsburgh... he didn't like his son going to Carnegie Tech... I understand why. The younger Sivitz did a lot of chemistry and experiments in radioactive isotopes that led to research on Nuclear energy. His daughter my grandmother was there during WWII when the campus sororities would apparently solicit members on Yom Kippur to insure that no Jews were within it's ranks. My grandmother's brother, Bobby Sivitz used to travel to class in a steam pipe to avoid the Antisemitism. The 1960's generation grew up and voted for Obama, but so little has changed.