July 31, 2002

IsraelInsider

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The current Intifada is global in scope, and fueled by a campaign of incitement that seeks to drive people, wherever they may live, to strike out against Jews. This campaign is being waged over the Internet on dozens of sites that are either directly or indirectly associated with terrorist organizations.

In addition to incitement, some of these sites provide explicit instructions on how to place anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, feature video footage of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel towns, and present identity papers taken off the bodies of Israelis they've killed.

We don't have to just sit and worry and wait until we become victims ourselves -- we can fight back against the websites of the Intifada!

So, what can we do?


We can shut down the sites, and/or force them to move, and to move again.

We can make them spend more time defending themselves and less time attacking us.

We can deprive them of the legitimacy that comes from having a presence on the Internet.

We can provide them with a pointed reminder that there is no anonymity on the Internet, that we know who they are, we know what they are doing, and we have risen up against them.

I say these things having personally taken on a number of these sites over the past month, with the result that some are no longer online, and others have been forced to move their operations to another country.

Among the sites that have either been taken down or forced to relocate are those of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Islamic Society of Gaza (an affiliate of Hamas) and the primary site of Hamas. This last site has, in recent weeks, moved four times and changed its domain name, in an apparent response to my inquiries. As I write, this site is now called www.palestine-info.cc//

This Hamas site was originally set up by a man named Zayed Khalil, who in addition to his ties to Hamas also served as an Al Qaida operative. In the late 1990s, Khalil purchased Osama bin Laden's satellite telephone and airtime. That phone was used to plan the bombings of the American embassies in Africa. The lesson to be learned from this is that anyone who establishes or maintains such websites may himself be a terrorist. It is the least we can do to make their lives on the Internet a little more difficult.

What were my 'weapons' in taking on these websites?


A web browser

An email account

Politeness

Persistence

And a little knowledge about how the Internet works


In the end it was a simple matter of emailing the Internet Service Provider that hosted the sites. I politely informed them that:

They were hosting the site (don't assume they know).

That the site was associated with a terrorist organization.

That hosting such a site was illegal (the site were hosted in the U.S.)

And I asked them if they thought the site was in compliance with their acceptable use policies.

I have posted more information about specific sites and methods used to investigate them here: www.simokyfed.com/mt/haganah/index.html

If you wish to be kept informed of efforts such as these, or have suggestions of either sites to look into or techniques that can be used, you may write care of this address: haganah@simokyfed.com


* Andrew Aaron Weisburd is a web developer from Carbondale, Illinois :andrew@weisburd.net

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