A cyberattack campaign, dubbed #OpIsrael by hacking group Anonymous failed to bring down the Israeli government websites over the weekend.

Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, of the government’s National Cyber Bureau said that while the attack did take place, it did hardly any damage. Ben Yisrael said that Anonymous lacked the skills to damage the country’s vital infrastructure. And if that was its intention, then it wouldn’t have announced the attack before hand.

“It wants to create noise in the media about issues that are close to its heart,” he said, as quoted by the Associated Press news agency.

Posters using the name of the hacking group Anonymous had warned they would launch a massive attack on Israeli sites in a strike they called #OpIsrael starting April 7. Last week, a leading hacker going by the handle of “Anon Ghost” said that “the hacking teams have decided to unite against Israel as one entity…Israel should be getting prepared to be erased from the Internet,” according to Israeli media reports.

Israel’s Bureau of Statistics was down on Sunday morning but it was unclear if it was hacked. Defense and Education Ministry as well as banks had come under attack the night before but the security shrugged it off.
Anonymous did have a crakc at the stock market website and the Finance Ministry website but no one there noticed.

Where Anonymous was successful was when it targeted small business. Some homepage messages were replaced with anti-Israel slogans, media said. Israeli hackers hit sites of radical Islamist groups and splashed them with pro-Israel messages.