Jewish newspaper's website hacked

The website of Britain's flagship Jewish newspaper has been attacked by Turkish-speaking hackers, its editor has said.

The site of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, the world's oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper, was replaced by a Palestinian flag and anti-Semitic writings for several hours, editor Stephen Pollard said.

"Somebody hacked into the site and had a message up for a couple of hours," Mr Pollard said. "It did no damage, as far as we can tell."

The site was still unavailable early yesterday. A version of the site cached by Google showed a large Palestinian flag against a black background. In a message posted in English and Turkish, a group calling itself the "Palestinian Mujaheeds" quotes from the Quran and attacks Jews in anti-Semitic terms.

Mr Pollard said that the attack might be related to the diplomatic feud that erupted between Israel and Turkey last week, but added: "I don't want to speculate."

The Turkish government was outraged when Israel summoned its ambassador last week to express its anger over a Turkish television drama that depicts Israeli agents kidnapping children and shooting old men. Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, denied the ambassador a handshake and forced him to sit on a low sofa as the cameras rolled.

Israel has since apologised for the incident, which threatened to poison relations between the traditional allies.

The Chronicle, founded in 1841, has a weekly circulation of about 30,000.