WASHINGTON & BEIRUT (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli hackers assailed a Lebanese Internet company for what was believed to be an act of reprisal for its hosting of a Hezbollah-maintained television station, Al Manar, according to the company's director on Friday.
A Lebanese information technology company, Destination, an Internet network division of ITX, was defaced on Thursday halting services for more than six hours.
ITX is responsible for designing, programming and displaying advertisements for the website of Hezbollah's Al Manar television.
An ITX picture shown on the site was damaged by a large caption displayed across the screen reading "closed by Mossad [Israeli intelligence]."
ITX general manager, Ziad Mugraby, assumed the hackers gained access to the Internet site by using the Israeli service provider NetVision.
"It was clear that the hackers wanted us to know they were Israelis because usually hackers clean up their traces after they vandalize a site, but they did not," Mugraby said.
Mugraby also said that ITX would continue to provide service to Al Manar's site.
"The attack appears to be in reprisal for the role of ITX in the technical designing and programming of the Internet site of al-Manar daily broadcasts for the benefit of its viewers worldwide," a statement by ITX said.
Al-Manar is known to be the most active media organization that supports the Palestinian Intifada.
The site includes photos of Israeli violence towards Palestinians and encourages powerful Palestinian responses like that of Hezbollah's opposition to the 22-year Israeli occupation of south Lebanon that ended only after Hezbollah's extensive attempts to force the Israelis out from the area.
Israelis and Arabs have been attacking each other's websites more frequently since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising last September.
