“Jerusalem Post” hijacked: Hackers attack Israeli newspaper

P.Ro-Iranian hackers temporarily paralyzed the website of the Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” and the Twitter account of “Maariv” on Monday. Instead of the news content, a model image of the Israeli nuclear reactor in the desert city of Dimona was shown, which is detonated with a rocket.

The rocket is fired from a ring with a clenched fist, like the one carried by the Iranian General Ghassem Soleimani, who was killed in an American drone attack in Iraq exactly two years ago. Next to it, in English and Hebrew, it says: “We are close to you where you don’t think about it.” In the meantime, the newspaper’s website and the Maariv account have returned to their normal state. It is unclear whether the hackers were in Iran or from another country, wrote the “Jerusalem Post”. It is also not clear whether they are traveling on behalf of the state.

The newspaper had been the target of pro-Iranian hackers in the past. In May 2020, a picture of the burning city of Tel Aviv appeared on the website. It showed how the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached for a lifebuoy in the sea – with the caption “Be ready for a surprise”.

Tehran sees Israel as an archenemy. The destruction of the Jewish state and the “liberation of Palestine” have been part of the country’s foreign policy doctrine for four decades. Soleimani was killed with a drone attack on January 3, 2020 during a visit to Baghdad on the orders of the then American President Donald Trump. Tehran said the attack endangered peace in the region and called for the UN to condemn it.