Hackers interrupt Israeli TV broadcast with pro-Palestine message

A suspected Palestinian hacker briefly overtook an Israeli television broadcast Monday night.

During a broadcast, the hacker wrote on the screen “Palestine-Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine” after which the broadcast was cut off.

The Palestinian hacker ′Anas As’ hacked official Israeli TV last night wrote on the screen ′Palestine- Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine “, before the live broadcast was cut off.

The end is EPIC… watch #Palestine pic.twitter.com/D32oRYT6HW

— Abier Khatib (@abierkhatib) May 25, 2021

Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since May 10 have killed more than 200 Palestinians, rendered thousands homeless, and laid waste to buildings and key infrastructure across the blockaded territory. It was the latest such bombardment to hit the crowded coastal strip of some two million people, after three previous wars with Israel since 2008.

Rockets from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli soldier, one Indian, and two Thai nationals, medics say. Some 357 people in Israel have been wounded.

There is controversy about how many of those killed in Gaza were combatants, and how many were civilians. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the bombing campaign had killed “more than 200 terrorists” in Gaza.

Lynn Hastings, of the UN aid agency OCHA, said the intense bombing had devastated people’s mental health. During the last war in 2014, “we had humanitarian pauses, where people were able to get out,” she said. “That really speaks to the amount of trauma that was experienced this time, where there was absolutely no pause for people to breathe.

Peace talks have stalled since 2014, including over the status of occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The latest military escalation started after violent clashes in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Israeli forces had moved in on Palestinian worshippers at the site, toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan. They had also sought to quell protests against the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, to make way for Jewish settlers.

The clashes prompted Hamas to launch rockets from Gaza towards Israel on May 10, and Israel responded with airstrikes.