From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 1, 2024
Reports: Cyber Directorate thwarted social media campaign with ‘price list’ for kidnapping, murder of Israeli athletes in Paris
Israel’s National Cyber Directorate has successfully taken down a social media campaign that threatened members of the Israeli delegation to the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to Hebrew media reports.
The video that was taken down reportedly showed a “price list” for the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes, with a reward of 40,000 euros for an assassination.
According to the Maariv newspaper, the social media clip was made to look like a news item, with a narration in broken English and images from the Olympics in Munich in 1972 during which a cell of Black September terrorists broke into the Olympic village and took Israeli athletes hostage, eventually killing 11 and a German police officer.
It featured photos of Israeli taekwondo practitioner Avishag Semberg and soccer players Dor Turgeman and Daniel Peretz, the latter of whom is not part of the Paris delegation having injured himself in the weeks before the Olympics.
The campaign was reportedly connected to a far-right French organization.
Last week, Channel 12 reported that a group of anti-Israel hackers calling themselves “Zeus” had published personal information about Israeli athletes and pictures from their military service. That campaign was reportedly promoted using social media profiles impersonating a French organization called GUD, a far-right students’ union.
The Times of Israel Community.