Hackers fill Long Island Jewish day school’s website with swastikas, slurs

Image by Screenshot/Twitter

By David Ian Klein December 15, 2020

Hackers infiltrated the website of North Shore Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school in Great Neck, Long Island, filling it with antisemitic slurs and imagery.

The hackers changed the school’s name to “North Shore Hebrew Death Camp” and uploaded images of swastikas, Nazi rallies and other antisemitic symbols. They also rewrote the school’s information page to read “About the Kike Race,” and boasted about sending students on a “field trip” to Auschwitz.

“We are horrified that hackers have targeted a Jewish school and exposed children to horrific Nazi imagery and messages,” Liora Rez, the Director of StopAntisemitismnow.org who first publicized the hack, told the New York Post. “Many of these teens are descendants of Holocaust survivors and generational trauma is often triggered when events like these occur.”

The hack lasted for a few hours before the school regained control of the site. The school’s headmaster, Daniel Vitow, told the New York Post that it was working with law enforcement to handle the situation.

“It’s truly unthinkable that anyone could be so consumed by anti-Semitism and hatred that they would commit such a vile and repugnant crime against our community during Hanukkah,” said State Sen. Anna M. Kaplan, who represents the district, in a statement. “This is a horrific reminder that hatred and anti-Semitism are alive and well even in our own backyards, and we must ALL speak out in no uncertain terms that we reject it at every opportunity and in every corner of our community.”

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