Occupied Jerusalem: Two Israeli television news programmes were briefly hacked, with images promoting Islam and a message suggesting a recent wave of fires was divine retribution shown in their place, reports said Wednesday.
Tuesday night’s incident came ahead of an expected vote in parliament on a bill to prevent the use of loudspeakers for early morning and late night calls to prayer at mosques.
Programmes on privately owned Channels 2 and 10 were interrupted for around 30 seconds by images of Muslim sites, including Jerusalem’s Haram Al Sharif, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.
A call to prayer was also played as well as a message that seemed to refer to divine retribution.
Israel’s parliament is expected to take an initial vote on the bill to prevent the use of loudspeakers at mosques on Wednesday.
Major fires fed by high winds and dry conditions hit areas in the 1948 areas and the occupied West Bank last week, destroying hundreds of homes and causing tens of thousands to evacuate.
In July 2014, pirates hacked the Israeli military’s Twitter account during that year’s war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
A hacking campaign in January 2012 claimed by a group of Saudis and Palestinians from Gaza hit official sites, including for the Tel Aviv stock exchange and Israeli airline El Al.
Those attacks managed to expose tens of thousands of credit card details.
