The websites of Israel's stock exchange and national airline were hit by hack attacks today after weekend threats from the pro-Palestinian hacker 0xOmar. It's the latest volley in the escalating hacker-on-hacker pissing-match currently drenching the Middle East in leaked credit card information.

Today's attacks weren't very impressive; they briefly took down the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al Airlines, but didn't impact service in either cases. Still, they've captured headlines because of their place in the ongoing 'cyberwar' being waged between two groups of teen hackers on either side of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This all started started in early January, when a hacker claiming to be a 19-year-old Saudi going by the name 0xOmar leaked about 15,000 Israeli credit cards and claimed to have a million more. Besides his burning hatred of Israel, he seemed like a pretty normal teenage geek in our chat with him, with a penchant for Xbox and web design.

In retaliation for 0xOmar's attack on Israel, an Israeli teen going by the confusingly-similar name 0xOmer leaked thousands of Saudi credit card details last week. He claims to be an Israel Defense Soldier working with a team of three others. 0XOmer's crew is now joined in battle against 0xOmar by an another pro-Israeli hacker named Hannibal, who just leaked the Facebook login info for 20,000 Arab users onto Pastebin. But 0xOmar says he's getting backup, too, from some Palestinian hackers named Team Nightmare, who may have been behind today's attacks.

Meanwhile, these teen nerds' squabbling has provoked Israel into basically threatening to assassinate 0XOmar, and Hamas is jumping on board, urging hackers to keep hitting Israel. This will no doubt spur lots of scary talk about cyberwar and cyberterrorism. But this is not war or terrorism; stealing and leaking personal info is large-scale cybercrime that happens pretty much every day. Today we learned hackers stole the personal information of 24 million Zappos customers. A shitty, illegal thing to do—but not a declaration of war on our nation's bargain lovers.

Update: I just conducted an email interview with Hannibal, the crusading Jewish hacker leaking Arab Facebook logins, Here's what he had to say (not much.)

Your newest release is 30 000 "Facebook & email accounts." How many
of these are Facebook accounts, and how many are email accounts?
 All combined

Please explain exactly how you got this information. Did you
compromise Facebook?
 Maybe yes, maybe no. (-;

What is your background?
 I'm a Young Jew. I live in an unknown location Somewhere in the world.

Why are you attacking Arabs?
 Arabs are a danger to humanity, this is a huge example of the Holocaust

Are you associated with 0xOmer or the other Israeli hackers leaking Saudi credit card information?
 I'm not about anybody. I work Alone

You said you've received emails from senior politicians about the information you have. Could you share any with me as proof?
 I have hundreds of emails. I do not have much time

Have you stolen anything else you haven't talked about in your pastebins?
 Yes. Sensational surprises soon.

Why is your name "Hannibal Lecter?"
 I admire the Hannibal Lecter, a genius.

Anything else to add?
 Arabs Owned By Hannibal = D