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Israeli Infrastructure Proves Too Strong For Anonymous
Mephistophocles writes "Ever since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense, hackers have been working overtime to strike a blow against the Israeli government's computer systems, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said Sunday. No fewer than 44 million attacks have been recorded since the operation began five days ago — with nearly all of them failing, thanks to the recent strengthening of computer defense systems in Israel. Speaking at a special press conference at the Government Computing Center in Jerusalem about the cyber war against Israel that has accompanied Hamas's rocket attacks, Steinitz said that hackers 'are trying to disable the symbols of Israeli sovereignty, to enter web sites and install anti-Israel content, thus compromising information and data and damaging the government's ability to serve the public.' Most of the attacks, he said, were against government sites, like the Prime Minister's Office site, and security-related sites, such as that of the Home Front Command, the body charged with informing Israelis on how to protect themselves in the event of an attack. Out of those 44 million-plus attacks on government and defense related sites, said Steinitz, only one succeeded – partially. One site, which he did not name, was 'wobbly for a few minutes,' but quickly recovered. Even though the government has been successful in warding off hack attacks, Steinitz said that government sites were fully backed up and mirrored, meaning that they could be replaced by a duplicate site instantly if the original site were compromised."
They are not homebrewn but smuggled from Iran through Egypt.
The Qassam series of rockets are certainly manufactured by the Palestinians. The longer range rockets are of Iranian, Chinese, and Russian origins.
Palestinians in Israel have the right to vote already.
But not the ones in occupied Gaza.
The reality aside, Israel has attempted to break the cycle of violence. Note that they limited or completely stopped all attacks against Hamas several times.
But they haven't stopped building on Palestinian land.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The fact is they have had a nuclear capability for a while and have proven they are not trigger happy and they are capable of securing the nuclear weapons. Check out a map and see just how small a country it is. Any nuclear attack on Gaza or the West Bank would be the equivalent of nuking themselves.
They did use the threat of nuclear retaliation in 1973 but that was a ruse to get Nixon to take his head out of his ass and re-supply the IDF. They purposely let leak through unencrypted radio transmissions that they were activating their Samson plan which was the code for arming their nukes on their F-4's and Jericho missiles. Not that they really needed to do so since they had already pushed the Syrians and Egyptians back into their own countries. Nixon didn't want to get involved becuase at the time the Soviets were heavily invested with the Egyptians and Syrians and he was afraid of escalating the problem.
The 73 war is probably the most humiliating loss the Arab countries have suffered in all their conflicts with Isreal. The Arabs had total surprise, overwhelming numerical advantages, Soviet wire guided anti-tank missiles, night vision scopes with IR targeting in their tanks (again thanks to the Soviets), and advanced first line SAM systems once again courtesy of the Soviets. They also came up with an ingenious way of tackling the gigantic sand berms using water cannons so their tanks could advance after crossing the canal. Too bad the Israelis held off 1000+ tanks off in the Golan Heights for 24 hours using only 37 Israeli tanks because of very poor tactical leadership on the Syrian side. They held long enough for reinforcements to arrive using the landscape, superb shoot and re-position tank tactics, and main gun range superiority. The Egyptians advanced without re-positioning their SAM coverage and thus became vulnerable to air attacks and they some how allowed the Israelis to float a temporary bridge across the canal and flank then en-circle the Egyptian army in the Sinai. I can only assume someone on the Egyptian side fell asleep during the Israeli crossing. The funny thing is the school books in Egypt make it sound like Egypt won that war when they clearly didn't.
If there is any Marshall plan in the middle east it should be left entirely to the Arab league not any western countries. The Arab countries have booted the Palestinians out of their countries and prohibited migration since day 1. They had pretty good reasons seeing as how the Palestinians in Jordan initiated a coup to remove the government as soon as they got there. The Palestinians were cheerleaders for Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and after that war Kuwait evicted close to 100,000 Palestinians out of the country. Isreal is not and never has been the sole responsible party for palestinian suffering. It started with the inept British making promises to anyone who would listen to prop up their empire after WW1 and during WW2, Egypt abandon Egyptian citizens in the area now known as Gaza during their retreat in 67, and Jordan did the same thing resulting in the West Bank enclave.
The Iraqis and Afghan's have already had and wasted their Marshall Plan. In both cases the US and others removed the governments that were victimizing their own citizens and gave them a chance to rebuild their country in relative safety and they pissed it all away with in-fighting, bureaucratic corruption, and killing those trying to give them at least a fighting chance to build a better country. If the Japanese were able to swallow their pride and work with the US after WW2 I don't see how others could not do the same. Because this whole mess is more about Arab wounded pride than any land or religious disputes.