Yemeni hacker violates terror victim Ori Ansbacher’s online memorial group

Arab writes anti-Semitic and anti-Israel messages to group that embroiders wedding canopies and Torah ark covers in memory of Ori Ansbacher.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An Arab hacker from Yemen broke into a Whatsapp group formed in honor of terror victim Ori Ansbacher and left hateful and threatening messages, Israel Hayom reported Monday.

Nineteen-year-old Ansbacher was raped and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in February while walking alone in a Jerusalem forest. In honor of the sensitive, religious girl who loved beauty and poetry, Batsheva Sadan, whose parents were also killed by terrorists, decided to organize a special memorial.

She set up a Whatsapp and Facebook group of women from around the world who sewed pieces for canopies that could be used in wedding ceremonies and to cover synagogue arks. She called the group Rokmot Ohr, or “Embroidering Light,” which is also a play on Ansbacher’s first name, Ori.

On Sunday, when Sadan opened the group’s Facebook page, she found to her shock that an anonymous hacker had left anti-Semitic and anti-Israel curses and threats there in both English and very broken Hebrew.

“There is no peace with Israel. We are the Anemites (sic). We will continue to destroy Israel electronically. We are coming to the occupiers Free Palestin,” he wrote.

“We’ll attack you everywhere… I will come especially from Yemen to do it,” he said.

The hacker also changed the name of the group to “F**k Israel” and defaced the page with Arabic writing and images of Arabs shooting a gun and throwing a rock.

Sadan went to the police to file a complaint and described her feelings on her own Facebook page, said the report.

“This is internet terrorism,” she wrote. Someone took over groups I administer, changed the name and content and also sent me messages that threatened me personally.

“I know what breaking into a home is like, that’s how I lost my parents and my home. Today I was given a reminder of that horrible feeling when a terrorist broke into my cellphone.”

Over 5,000 women have taken part so far in embroidering small squares of cloth with Ansbacher’s name, pictures of hearts, flowers, Torah verses, etc. that were then painstakingly put together in Israel. They often include messages of support for the still-grieving family with their work, and describe why they chose to sew what they did.

One family, according to the group’s photographer on Facebook, snipped a square from a blanket used by the father as a boy in a concentration camp and kept carefully since the war.

They wrote that the day of Ansbacher’s funeral was the anniversary of their grandmother’s death in the Holocaust, and therefore they embroidered the words “Blood leads to blood,” from a verse in Hosea as their contribution.