The anti-settler, pro-Palestinian organization Rabbis for Human Rights last month sustained Distributed Denial of Service attacks on its website that brought the site down and eventually forced the NGO to relocate to a new hosting company, Ha’aretz reported. As soon as the website was moved, its new hosting outfit received an email in Hebrew saying, “Shalom, this is a first and last message. Please execute the removal of this website from the server in order to limit future damage.”
Founded in 1988, RHR describes itself as “The only rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel” serving as “a shofar for the distribution of information about human rights in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” According to NGO Monitor, its latest available annual budget, for 2014, was roughly $1,516,000, paid, among others, by AECID (Spain), European Commission, Misereor (Germany), Trocaire (Ireland), Norwegian Church (Norway), Kerk in Actie (Netherlands), Church of Sweden, Foundation for Middle East Peace (US), New Israel Fund, Social Justice Fund, and Moriah Fund. This included, based on financial information submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, donations of $68,158 from the EU, and $161,086 from the British Embassy.
RHR gained notoriety last October, when a video showing a settler brandishing a knife threatening the organization’s chief, clergyman Arik Asherman, went viral.
Hosting company Club VPS told the new host, TechnoCraft, that they decided to let go of RHR following several attacks of a few gigabytes in volume in different locations. In other words, they decided on evicting RHR well before sustaining serious damage, and told the new company that “the website’s content might be problematic,” which is a violation of their service contract.
The email Club VPS sent RHR said that the system had identified non-conforming “or harmful” use of their account, which violated the common use policy. “The violation caused a significant damage to our infrastructure or our reputation, and therefore the decision to suspend your account is final and not open to negotiations,” the (form) email said.
According to the new host, the threatening email they received came from an IP address in New Jersey, but that could easily be faked using VPN (Virtual Private Network).