Source: http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/pdf/hamas_internet0606e.pdf
1 This Information Bulletin follows up on our previous Information Bulletin dated October 2005, titled “Marketing terrorism by Internet: the Hamas terrorist movement continues using Internet Service Providers in Eastern Europe and South East Asia to operate its leading sites (Update)”..
Overview
- The Hamas movement places significant importance on disseminating its messages through the Internet. These are distributed to various target audiences in the Palestinian Authority administered territories and across the Arab/Muslim world. Over the years, the Hamas invested large sums of money into the creation of an extensive Internet infrastructure, which includes over 20 websites in eight languages (Arabic, English, French, Russian, Persian, Malay, Urdu, and Indonesian). According to our assessment, the infrastructure is run by Nizar Hussein, a member of Hamas who works on behalf of the Hamas information bureau in Damascus and operates from the office of Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon.
- Hamas uses its infrastructure of Internet websites to disseminate a variety of information on the conflict with Israel, the internal Palestinian scene, as well as basic information on the Hamas movement. The websites are used to spread messages preaching terrorism and encouraging hatred against Israel (and sometimes against the Jewish people and Western countries). They are also an important means for waging a war of propaganda against Palestinian Authority Chairman Abu Mazen and Fatah (the official Palestinian media is controlled by Abu Mazen, and Hamas still has difficulties using it for its own purposes).
- We have recently recharted Hamas’s leading websites and their hosting providers.2 This is the first such examination since the Hamas movement won the Legislative Council elections and assembled the government. The purpose of the examination is to characterize Hamas’s websites and see whether there have been any changes in the various websites and their hosting providers in the course of the past six months.
The entire article can be read at: http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/eng_n/pdf/hamas_internet0606e.pdf
