Challah Hu Akbar
Last week I reported that Mahmoud Abbas was monitoring the phones of his opponents. The source of the report was InLightPress, a site which is very critical of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently engaged in a ruthless campaign against his opponents.
On Saturday, InLightPress was hacked. On Sunday, if you visited InLightPress’ website you received the following message.
The website was attacked by hackers, will be back within a short time.
When I visited the site on Monday morning, the following message appeared.
The website is facing privateering from a political destination which is affected from what we publish and will be back soon.
On Monday afternoon InLightPress’ website read:
The website is facing privateering from a political destination which is affected from what we publish and will be back tomorrow.
I am certain that the “political destination” referred to by InLightPress is the office of Mahmoud Abbas.
Aside for a condemnation from The Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists, the incident has received zero press coverage. I will continue to monitor this very closely, check back here for updates.
Update: It appears that someone may not have taken to kindly to the attack on InLightPress. It appears that Fatah aligned Palestine Press, better known for its attacks against Hamas, has been attacked. If one currently tries to visit the site you receive the following message.
Sorry. There is intense pressure on the site you can try again.
Update: While the InLightPress website remains down, their Twitter account returned to action this morning.
Update: It now appears that hackers may be targeting Wafa, the official news agency of the Palestinian authority.
Update: It now appears that Ma’an News’ Arabic website is down. The English site is up…for now.
Update: It now appears that Maan English is down.
Update: Alright, Maan English is back up, didn’t appear to be real hack, was down for under 10 minutes.
Update: Maan English is back down.
Update: InLightPress is back up and running and has released a scathing press release about the hacking attack. Details here.
Update: IMEMC is reporting that the attacks on Wafa and Maan were more likely part of the hacking war currently going on between Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers.
In any case, here are some events in which the PA shut down TV stations that may be of interest to people. I have more on suppression of journalists as a whole, but lets just focus on TV and large news sites.
November 2007 - Palestinian Authority forces arrested the owner of the private Al-Amal TV station in Hebron after the station aired one of Ismail Haniyeh's press conferences. http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=81489
December 2008 - Ramattan News Agency forced to stop work after “relentless and heightened persecution” by the Palestinian Authority. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/1606204491.html?dids=1606204491:1606204491&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Dec+01%2C+2008&author=KHALED+ABU+TOAMEH&pub=Jerusalem+Post&desc=Ramattan+news+agency+shuts+down+in+response+to+raids&pqatl=google
August 2009 - Director of Palestine TV, Muhammad Dahoudi, was fired after not covering Salam Fayyad enough.http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=152893
March 2010 - Palestinian Authority forced the closure of the only Christian TV station in Palestinian territory. PA soon backtracked, however, the owner of the station said he would not broadcast again until he received an apology. (Not sure that apology ever came) http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171669
I have some more with arrests of correspondents for news sites, but you get the point. One could also focus in on recent attacks against InLightPress, there have been attacks against other sites as well including Amal and KofiaPress, but I have focused on InLightPress as there is where it seemed to have all started.
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