Two Israeli media outlets hacked on anniversary of Irianian general Qassem Soleimani's killing

Jerusalem: Two major Israeli media outlets were hacked early Monday with a threatening message that appeared linked to the killing of a top Iranian general two years ago.

The website of the English-language Jerusalem Post and the Twitter account of Hebrew-language Maariv were taken over with a picture of a fist firing a shell out of a ring with a red stone on a finger toward an exploded dome.

“We are close to you where you do not think about it”, read text in English and Hebrew below the fist.

The hacking came exactly two years after the 3 January, 2020, US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The US said at the time that Soleimani, who was often seen wearing a ring with a red stone, was planning imminent action against US personnel in Iraq.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the hack lasted a few hours. Maariv’s Twitter account had deleted the foreign tweet, and had not posted anything new by Monday noon.

It was not immediately clear who had hacked the Israeli news outlets.

Israel fears Iran’s nuclear programme could be used to acquire weapons to harm the Jewish state, and the two countries regularly issue hints of possible strikes on one another.