Israel Says It Will Treat Online Credit Card Theft As It Would Terrorism 422
In the wake of the online theft of at least 6,000 credit card numbers belonging to Israelis, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that "Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action." Also at Reuters, with a few more details about the believed thief, known as OxOmar: "After Israeli media ran what they said were interviews conducted with OxOmar over email, the Haaretz newspaper said a blogger had tracked the hacker down and determined he was a 19-year-old citizen of the United Arab Emirates studying and working in Mexico."
Re:The new catch phrase apparently (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't say it is terrorism, they said they would use the same tools as for terrorism. That is, they know it's not terrorism, but think that the same tools would be useful.
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:3, Informative)
I think you are a victim of propaganda and I am sad for you that you are so narrow minded. Do you even know where Israel is on a map? Do you know its history? Do you know what "Palestinians" are and really come from? Do you even understand the conflicts? Do you think you understand Islam? Or even Judaism for that matter.
Getting directly to the article and crime, first of all, this hacking was done for a mix of racial, religious, and political reasons. This would not have been done to another Arab country in this way. The hacker was very clearly a racist and a bigot. If you read Israeli newspapers, you will get much more coverage of the facts (suprisingly many israeli newspapers are left wing and anti-govt before you call bias). Moreover, how do you propose a nation handle what is a direct attack against its citizens. This is different than an attack on Twitter users world-wide, this is a nationally and racially target attack.
Secondly, last I recall, citizens in other countries don't fear being blown up, shot, kidnapped, and tortured by Israelis. There's always a bad egg in every basket, sure, but percentage wise Israelis are among the most humane, ethical, and moral people. Just ask all the illegal immigrants, many of whom come from places that vowed to destroy Israel. Israel may not allow them all to stay, but they at least take care of them, feed the, give them medical care. Conversely, those same people trying to stream across the Egyptian border are shot on sight by Egyptian forces. Just ask all the Jews who lived in Arab countries and are either dead or in Israel because they actually were in reality ethnically cleansed vs. the media side show we hear about from the Palestinians. Google Pallywood sometime to start.
I think you are confusing several different things from nazi hunting to terrorist home destruction. I also think you are naive if you think that many of these people are "innocent." While it is possible to have terrorists, murders, ammunition, rockets, and such in your home by force, it's normally not needed in the places you seem to be implying. I suggest you dig up a history book and you really will see who the victims are. And yes, the Israelis are primarily the victims. They are the ones with citizens living in fear, constant terror attacks, people like you with endless streams of incorrect and malicious rhetoric. Yes, there are also "Palestinians" that are victims. There are unfortunately cases of mistakes, collateral damage, and such. But they are more victims of their leaders who seek to oppress their own people for their own financial and political gains. Whether is direct in using people as human shields or indirect by brain washing and indoctrination of children, it is sick and I pity those people.
As far as money and weapons, you do realize that the enemies of Israel such as Egypt actually receive more US aid. If you are so worldly, you must also know that the Israeli people for a long time have not wanted the majority of the aid, and there is often calls by the government to end it. You would also know that much of the aid was a condition of Israel giving up the Sinai to Egypt, and something they didn't want to do and heavily regret today. In fact the Sinai is now quickly becoming one of the worst terrorist hot beds in the world, and has issues such as human smuggling under Egyptian rule. Additionally, the aforementioned peace with Egypt looks like it may be dissolved by the "democractic" Muslim theocracy that looks like it will seize control of Egypt. I feel sorry for Egyptians for once too.
Finally, if you did some research, you would realize the Israel is indeed one of the most humane armies in the world, if not the most humane with active conflicts. The US has killed far more civilians than Israel ever has, and in Israel's case the term civilian is usually heavily debatable or simply media propaganda (you are not a civilian if you are firing guns or parked in an area that was for 2 days announced it would be bombed/destroyed). Indeed, if you compare the U
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:4, Informative)
Just like how hundreds of Israelis are driven off their land and have their olive groves bulldozed so Palestinian settlements can be built on their land? (free of any other races or religions of course). Isn't that how it works?
Those poor poor Israelis, having to suffer with their billion dollars in aid so they can turn around and compete with the US.
Now the ultra-orthodox are taking over Israel so the rest of the population can reap the Jewish extremism they have fostered.
Re:The new catch phrase apparently (Score:5, Informative)
And you obviously don't know or understand anything about the way Israel handles things. Please don't say things like this unless you've had the some education on the subject, please.
The reason it's a big deal out there is because they don't have the kind of laws for consumer protection that we do. Someone steals your credit card, and runs up a $30,000 tab, you pay it... or you go to jail. Period. So think about it this way. If someone effectively bombs your life, by taking your credit card, and shoots you with a debt you cannot pay and the ire of a state that takes debt VERY seriously... how is it not an act of terrorism? That's literally destroying someone's life.
What I'm wondering though, is if this means Israel will start negotiating with credit card thieves, and giving them what they want while getting nothing in return. We'll have to see.
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, last I recall, citizens in other countries don't fear being blown up, shot, kidnapped, and tortured by Israelis.
Do citizens of Gaza and the West Bank count?
you do realize that the enemies of Israel such as Egypt actually receive more US aid.
Incorrect. Israel gets $3 billion per year. Egypt gets $1.3 billion. Israel has a population of 7.6 million. Egypt has 81 million. So per capita aid is many times higher for Israel.
Re:Run to the USA to fund the murder of the purps? (Score:5, Informative)
The average Israeli gets more USA federal tax dollars spent on them than the average USA citizen.
Can you support this? I went looking, and it seems that Israel receives about $3,000,000,000 in aid. With a population of about 7.8 million people, this works out to less than $400/person.
This page [cbpp.org], the 2011 federal budget was about $3.5E12. If you focus on the social programs, retirement benefits and highway spending, then these account for about 68% of the federal budget. Dividing this total by a population of about 310 million people, I arrive at a total spending figure of about $7,700 per US citizen.
I've double-checked everything and can't see where I've made a mistake, other than in the arbitrary decision to exclude all defense, research and interest payments.
Re:The new catch phrase apparently (Score:1, Informative)
Except they haven't Oddly enough the supposed civilian statistics thrown up by the palestinians are weighted EXTREMELY heavily towards males over the age of 14 and under 40. Oddly enough, 14 is the exact age that Hamas and Fatah bring the kids into their organization.
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for your input Mr. Bigot.
They moved out of Europe because some jackass killed 7 million of them in the 40s, but I'm sure they were the aggressor then.
Then they are constantly bombed by terrorists, again proving they are the aggressor.
Now Iran supplies rockets to neighbors who are constantly firing them into Isreal targeting preschools and the like, again proving they are the aggressor.
Also when they sent athelets to the olympics in Munic they were hunted down and killed, showing that they are the aggressor.
If it wasn't for anti-semetic bigots like you, Isreal would probably be living in peace with their neighbors. But as long as people like you and Jimmy Carter keep spewing hatred and lies about them it is apparently ok to kill Jews in Isreal because they "had it comming".
Re:Retaliatory action? (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has one of its three strategic development centers outside the US in Israel. It is based on several startup companies that Microsoft has acquired in Israel, which are now part of this development center. Most of Windows NT technology was developed in Israel.
AKAMAI technology was developed in Israel by Danny Lewin, its co-founder and CTO. Mr. Lewin was killed on 9/11 on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.
SAP AG, the enterprise software leader, has its larger development center outside Germany in Raanana, Israel. This center, called SAP Labs Israel, is also based on several startup companies that SAP acquired in Israel.
Checkpoint, the world leader in internet security and firewalls is an Israeli company.
The AOL Instant Messenger was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis.
Given Imaging, an Israeli company, developed the first ingestible pill-sized video camera, used for medical diagnostic without the need of an invasive operation.
The Israeli company M-Systems developed the USB-Flash Drives, used for portable storage all over the world. The company was recently bought by SanDisk, an American company, the world leader in the flash storage market, established by an Israeli.
IBM, Kodak, Cisco, HP, Google, Novell and many others, also have large scale research and development centers in Israel.
Re:The new catch phrase apparently (Score:4, Informative)
I just feel sorry for whomever it is that's living next door to the thieves when Israel overreacts. Israel isn't exactly known for keeping any sort of perspective on things. Kill one of their citizens and they'll kill dozens of your citizens with little to no concern for innocent civilians.
Not according to Jonathan Sacerdoti [newstatesman.com] in the New Statesman (most certainly not a pro-Israel publication). In fact, during Operation Cast Lead, Israel managed a better than 1:1 ratio (that is, one civilian per combatant killed). The UN estimate for similar assymetric warfare is 3:1 - that is three civilians for each combatant killed. And since then, they have done even better. In 2011, it was either 1:10 (Jane's correspondent in Israel) [twitter.com] or 1:3 (Elder of Zion - factoring in numbers from PCHR) [blogspot.com].
Look for the actual facts, not mass media accounts. And as a rule of thumb, I'd discount hysterical claims right after an event, until they are actually examined. (Cases in point: the whole Muhammed al-Dura story [wikipedia.org], which was later shown to be a hoax, the supposed "massacre" of hundreds or thousands in Jenin [wikipedia.org] that turned out to be 52 or 53, mostly combatants).