www.israeldefenseforce.com

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fake Israeli Army Web Site Goes on Offensive

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - It looks official, but the ``Israel Defense Force''
Web site on the Internet has the Israeli military up in arms.

Click on www.israeldefenseforce.com and up comes a page that appears almost
identical to the real Israeli army spokesperson's site at www.idf.il.

The logo is the same, save for a missing letter, and both sites carry
photographs of four Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian gunmen in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites).

The big difference is the content.

Under the soldiers' photographs, a caption on the fake site reads: ``The
four Israeli soldiers murdered just before their trip to the West Bank on a
mission to kill Palestinian civilians.''

The real site has a column of ``Spokesperson news'' that includes funeral
times and dates for dead soldiers and summaries of the latest unrest in the
seven-week-old Palestinian uprising.

The fake site carries headlines such as: ``We are happy to announce that we
killed five new babies'' and ``We have successfully placed smoke and tear
gas bombs in all Christian churches and Muslim mosques.''

An Israeli military spokesman said on Thursday the army was not amused.

``We know the source of the Web site. It is a server in the United
States,'' said Lieutenant Jonathan Gutfarb. ``We intend to make a serious
complaint to the U.S. company that hosts this site on its server and ask
for its immediate removal.''

Gutfarb declined to identify the U.S. firm. He said the real army Web site
would publish a warning about the fake one.

Latest Shot In Internet War

The ersatz ``Israeli army'' site is the latest shot in an Internet war that
erupted in the wake of the current unrest, which has so far killed 228
people, most of them Palestinians, in seven weeks of violence.

A coordinated attack by thousands of pro-Palestinian Internet users last
month blocked access to the Web site of Israel's Foreign Ministry.

The ministry and other official Israeli Web sites beefed up their defenses
by using U.S.-based servers that could host more users without getting jammed.

Internet Service Providers in Israel have reported similar attempts to
flood them with e-mail.

Some opponents of Israel might see the fake army site as sweet revenge.


Louis Proyect
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