Islamists Hack Venice Jewish Community Library Website
computer hacking Image by Getty Images
Unknown individuals calling themselves the “Tunisian Fallaga Team” hacked into the website of the Venice Jewish community’s library and archive and posted pro-Islamist and pro-Palestinian messages on its home page.
Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, the director of the Renato Maestro Library and Archive, called the incident Monday “in effect, a violent and targeted threat, of a type that was clearly anti-Semitic.”
He said the library’s home page had been replaced for “several hours” by a dark screen with English-language slogans and videos inciting Islamist attacks in Tunisia and promoting the “fight for the liberation of Palestine.”
Police are investigating the incident.
“It is an act that we condemn with all our force,” Paolo Gnignati, the president of the Venice Jewish community, told local media. “It invites us never to lower our guard,” he said.
Local media reported that the Tunisian Fallaga Team had carried out other hacks, into non-Jewish Italian websites, in recent months. It was not clear if the attack on the Venice Jewish library was related to the major events to mark the 500th anniversary of the institution of the Venice ghetto, which are scheduled to kick off on March 29 and last throughout the year.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
