Shutting down terrorist websites after they have been identified has not worked as the groups re-establish them “within an hour,” he said.
Gabriel Weimann told Austria’s Die Presse newspaper that a Haifa University research program identified 12 terror websites several years ago and today there are more than 5,000 sites linked to Islamist extremists.
“Al Qaida alone is operating almost 60 home pages,” the Israeli specialist stated. “Hacking and closing their websites is a cat-and-mouse game. The mouse is hunted down; it dives into a hole and reappears through another. But it is not necessary to destroy these websites. By monitoring them carefully, you can learn a lot about the terrorists, about their motives, about their way of thinking, who they want to address, and who they want to attack. It allows you to open a window into the thoughts of terrorists.”
One alarming development is the recruitment of children through the Internet, he said. “Many terror websites offer music, cartoons or computer games,” he said.
“Hizbullah, for example, uses a game called ‘Special Force.’ It starts like a typical war game. The player shoots at Israeli soldiers, but suddenly, he finds himself in a Hizbullah training camp, where he is politically indoctrinated by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Al Qaida uses many cartoons praising suicide attacks.”
Hizbullah, the Shiite terror group, runs “dozens” of web sites in eight different languages, including Hebrew.
Insurgent groups in Iraq also operate websites seeking to influence U.S. forces. “There they show the killing of U.S. soldiers to intimidate the coalition forces,” Weiman said.
The websites also provide information to counterterrorism officials. “They can set traps for terrorists. In some cases, net-based communication between attackers even contributed to the prevention of attacks,” he said.
