Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2012
It’s Cyber War
A cyber war between Israel and its enemies is heating up, with both sides hacking into each other’s websites.
Hackers recently brought down the El Al and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange sites, stole credit card information of Israelis, and broke into the Israel Fire and Rescue Services website to put up anti-Israel text and images.
They posted a picture of Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon with Arabic text that read, “Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and all the Palestinian factions will fight your army. All prisoners will be released from your prisons. Freedom for Palestine.” They also wrote “Death to Israel” in red Hebrew letters. Ayalon’s site was itself breached but was back up within half an hour.
In retaliation, Israelis hacked into the websites of the Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates’ [UAE’s] stock exchanges and are threatening to take down even more sites in Arab countries: “We will decide on our next actions based on the actions of the terrorists, who seek to interfere with normal life in Israel,” the group said in a statement. “If there is no change in their policies in the near future we will also take down banking, stock, and government sites in the UAE,” it added.
In January a pro-Israel hacker named Hannibal said he would post details of 100,000 e-mail and Facebook accounts belonging to Arabs from Saudi Arabia and other countries.
Earlier, hackers calling themselves Nuclear Group published details of 4,800 credit cards allegedly belonging to Saudi residents. “Nuclear Group is now helping Hannibal and more pro-Israeli hackers in the world to fight against the Arabs,” the group said in a posting on a popular hacker message site.
The cyber war began when a Saudi-based hacker published the credit card information of thousands of Israelis. The same hacker later called on Arab hackers to unite against Israel.
IsraelNationalNews.com
CEO Talks Back
The CEO of the Dis-Chem pharmacy chain in South Africa recently faced down a boycott threat over its decision to sell Israeli Dead Sea skin-care products. An Arab woman complained to the company, claiming the products come “from a country whose human rights violations replicate Hitler’s Nazism.”
Dis-Chem would not remove the products, and the company’s CEO told the woman that likening Israel’s supposed human rights violations to the Nazis was “a scurrilous slur that you have clearly chosen to employ in order to give maximum offence.”
He then added, “If it is your intention to boycott Israeli products, you need to be consistent if your gesture is to have any meaning. I hope you don’t use an Intel chip in your computer with which you probably wrote your e-mail because it was invented in Israel.
“I hope that you stay in good health because if you need preventative surgery against a heart attack, you will have to boycott the procedure because guess what? The stent was invented in Israel!
“Likewise, I hope you are never prescribed any patch for diabetes, to deliver medication and other drugs. If you are an asthmatic you may have to use a new type of inhaler (Spin) invented in Israel. So please check!
“Israel has given the world the system of drip irrigation which is being widely adopted in SA [South Africa] with water shortages like many countries. Should you boycott all fruit and vegetables grown by this method? The list that Israel has given the world is very lengthy. Check very carefully before you boycott.”
IsraelNationalNews.com
Russia Hugs Iran
Russia has given Iran its bear hug and warns Israel and the West an attack on Tehran will be considered an attack on Moscow. Russia’s outgoing ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters,“If Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.”
Kremlin Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev accused Israel of provoking the United States toward war against Iran and has come to the defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning Western nations not to intervene in Syria with military forces. Russia is a major arms supplier to Syria and has a heavy investment in Iran’s nuclear facilities.
IsraelNationalNews.com
Logic or Lie?
Hamas says if only Jews were still in Gaza, it would be able to stage peaceful protests. Without them, the only choice is violence.
The odd logic came from senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. “Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip? When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable,” Zahar said.
Gaza was home to more than 9,000 Jewish people from the early 1980s until 2005 when the Israeli government expelled them, hoping to end rocket attacks by Gaza terrorists who have killed and wounded hundreds of Jews.
Now Hamas blames their departure for its lack of peaceful protests. However, Hamas also has said the Jewish expulsion from Gaza and the release of more than a 1,000 terrorists for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in October 2011 prove violence is the Arabs’ only recourse.
IsraelNationalNews.com
China Builds Railway to Eilat
The Chinese government will help Israel build an extension of its railway from Nahal Tzin to the southern city of Eilat. The 180-kilometer (112-mile) route is expected to expand tourism to the Red Sea resort town.
China, which built Haifa’s Carmel Tunnels, has been tapped to develop the city’s Haifa-Carmel railway as well.
IsraelNationalNews.com
North Korea No. 1 Persecutor of Christians
North Korea tops the Open Doors 2012 World Watch List for the 10th straight year as the country where Christians face the most severe persecution, while Islamic-majority countries represent nine of the top 10 and 38 of the 50 countries on the annual ranking.
Afghanistan (2), Saudi Arabia (3), Somalia (4), Iran (5), and the Maldives (6) form a bloc where indigenous Christians have almost no freedom to worship openly. For the first time Pakistan (10) entered the top 10. Also in the top 10 are Uzbekistan (7), Yemen (8), and Iraq (9).
Defiantly Communist, North Korea built a bizarre quasi-religion around the country’s founder, Kim Il-Sung. Anyone with “another god” is automatically persecuted. The country’s estimated 200,000 to 1400,000 Christians must remain deeply underground. An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 are held in ghastly prison camps.
Sudan moved up 19 spots to No. 16. Nigeria jumped 10 spots to No. 13. Egypt, racked by violent protests and upheaval during the Arab Spring, rose four positions to No. 15. Increased Islamic extremism triggered the upward movement of Sudan, Nigeria, and Egypt.
In July 2011 southern Sudan, which is mostly Christian, seceded to become the independent country of South Sudan, leaving the Christians of North Sudan much more isolated under President Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir now vows to make his country even more Islamic. The military has attacked and killed many Christians there.
Nigeria remains the country with the worst atrocities in terms of lives lost. More than 300 Christians were martyred last year in Nigeria, though the actual number is believed to be double or triple that figure. The total is probably greater in North Korea but impossible to confirm due to its isolation.
China still has the world’s largest persecuted church of 80 million, but it went from No. 16 to No. 21 primarily because pastors are learning how to play “cat and mouse” with the government.
An estimated 100 million Christians worldwide suffer interrogation, arrest, and even death for their faith in Christ, with millions more facing discrimination and alienation. For the entire article, go to www.tinyurl.com/seeopendoorslist.
by OpenDoorsUSA.org
British Students Assault Jewish Man in Nazi Game
Students from the prestigious London School of Economics recently assaulted a Jewish man who objected to a Nazi Ring of Fire card game while on a ski trip with fellow students. The same university last year accepted a huge donation from a foundation headed by Saif al-Islam al Qaddafi, a son of the former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, reported Arutz-7.
The student said he could not stand silent during a game in which cards were laid out to form a swastika. Participants then had to “salute the Fuhrer.”
The London Guardian reported in January that 12,000 Facebook friends followed the game on the social network site.
“I am sad the nerdy Jew lost the fight with the fake Nazi, but successful Jewish violence usually creates nastier headlines than more usual Jewish passivity,” the Guardian’s Tanya Gold wrote.
“Non-murderous anti-Semitism usually does not bother me,” she said. “It feels essential, however, to place this game in context because Jews are becoming afraid. We sniff the air and feel a change because anti-Semitic discourse is more acceptable now than at any time since the 1930s.”
“It is a sickness,” she said, “that emerges from generation to generation….Anti-Semitic discourse is now mainstream and to say it all comes from the crimes of the Jewish state feels disingenuous and a denial of the past.
“The incidents mount up—the heckling of an Israeli orchestra, the graffiti on university walls, the demand that Jews denounce Israel if they wish to be accepted in polite society, the plays and TV films written without context, the violence against Orthodox Jews (visible Jews), the sale of anti-Semitic toys in Poland, the terrible fact that 12,000 Facebook users think to mock the Holocaust, not lament it.”
Nazi parties are common in Britain. A rising star in British politics, Member of Parliament Aidan Burley was booted from a senior post in the government after being photographed next to a bachelor dressed in a Nazi uniform at a stag party in the French Alps, said Arutz-7.
