December 3,
2008: Recently, Israel hacked into the Syrian phone system, and sent thousands
of messages to Syrians offering a $10 million reward for information on the
whereabouts of missing Israeli soldiers. Syrian intelligence officials believe
the campaign was more interested in recruiting intelligence agencies. Many
Syrians thought it was all an attempt by their own government to find and
identify disloyal citizens. Whatever the case, such an attack is nothing new.
For the last
two years, Israel has been hacking into Lebanon based Hezbollah radio and TV
broadcasts, and inserting messages that point out mistakes Hezbollah has made,
or lies Hezbollah has been pushing, or simply ridiculing the Islamic radicals.
Israeli Information War teams have also spammed Lebanese cell phone users with
anti-Hezbollah voice mail and text messages.
This sort of
thing confirms to the Arabs that the Israelis are evil, in league with the
devil and thus in possession of some kind of magic. Other Arab pundits point
out that Arab countries need to increase their spending on education, so that
Arab geeks can hack Israeli communications. But the magic angle tends to be
more popular with editors and government censors.