World Jewish News

The Website of the Jewish Chronicle as it looked on Monday morning.

Hackers deface Jewish Chronicle site

The Web site of Britain's flagship Jewish newspaper has been attacked by Turkish-speaking hackers, its editor said Monday.

The site of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, the world's oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper, was replaced by a Palestinian flag and anti-Semitic writings for several hours, editor Stephen Pollard said.

"Somebody hacked into the site and had a message up for a couple of hours," Pollard told AP. "It did no damage, as far as we can tell."

The site was still unavailable early Monday. A version of the site cached by Google showed a large Palestinian flag against a black background. In a message posted in English and Turkish, a group calling itself the "Palestinian Mujaheeds" quotes from the Quran and attacks Jews in anti-Semitic terms.

Pollard said that the attack might be related to the diplomatic feud that erupted between Israel and Turkey last week, but added: "I don't want to speculate."

The Turkish government was outraged when Israel summoned its ambassador last week to express its anger over a Turkish television drama that depicts Israeli agents kidnapping children and shooting old men. Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, denied the ambassador a handshake and forced him to sit on a low sofa as the cameras rolled.

Israel has since apologized for the incident, which threatened to poison relations between the traditional allies.

The Chronicle, founded in 1841, has a weekly circulation of about 30,000.

JPost.com