Johnathan Galt

Johnathan R. Galt, Jonathan Galt or John Galt are pseudonyms used by an online activist engaged in monitoring alleged Islamists online. He has collaborated with a number of likeminded individuals in the United States and Britain including the Wiltshire based former actor Glen Jenvey, the Christian right winger Jeremy Reynalds and the IT technician Jim Ownbey.

Azzam.com

Galt is credited by Azzam.com as the individual behind the removal of their website. In a statement dated 24 September 2002 they claimed:

After the events of 11 September 2001, our site was shut down after the American hosting company received numerous emails from viewers upset at the attacks. The hosting company informed us that they had to remove our site for "Terms of Service" (TOS) violations. A few weeks later, our site reappeared on the servers of a Muslim hosting company in Canada, who also duly shut the site down, after receiving a written order from the local law-enforcement authorities. No reason was given in the order, but the Muslim company still shut down the site without contesting it.

Also after 11 September, a group of Zionist Jews surfaced on the Internet, led by a British individual who goes by the pen-name of Johnathan R. Galt. He set-up a web-site entitled "Islamic Terror Sites on the Web" at http:www.geocities.com/johnathanrgalt and an email address, johnathanrgalt@yahoo.co.uk. Both addresses are still functional at the time this statement goes to press. Mr Galt organized a collective, concerted campaign, to have a number of Islamic web-sites shut down, by complaining to and putting emotional pressure on the hosting and service-providing companies. Mr Galt slandered our site as labelling it, Al-Qa'idah's Azzam.Com and this label was enough to convince many companies to remove our site. A search for Johnathan Galt (Johnathan spelt with two h's) on Google returns a number of pro-Jewish web-sites where Mr Galt has posted his appeals.

Sometime in November 2001, our web-site was transferred to hosting companies in southeast Asia and we began to provide daily, uninterrupted news on the events in Afghanistan. The site continued to remain online until July 2002. During this time, whilst tracking the continuing efforts of Mr Galt, we realized, as we thought at first, that the FBI was ensuring that our site remained online, even though officials at the US State Department cited concern over our site, in news reports that were carried by major news organizations.

A number of discussion boards specific to web hosting companies, e.g. webhostingtalk.com, revealed threads stating that companies wanted to shut down service to the web-hosting companies hosting our sites, but they were specifically instructed by the FBI that "this site must remain open at any cost". We concluded that US intelligence wanted our site to remain open for two reasons:

(i) To use it for gathering intelligence on events happening on the ground in Afghanistan and perhaps that our news bulletins might lead them to capture "Mojaheddin suspects".

(ii) To gather intelligence on the infrastructure behind the site. Mr Galt and Co., apparently not convinced of the "benefits" of the FBI's strategy, continued to pressurize both the FBI and the web hosting companies, to remove our web-site, and this tit-for-tat saga continued until July this year. In June and July 2002, American forces in Afghanistan took heavy casualties and many of the incidents in which these casualties occurred, were being daily reported by us.

By the end of July 2002, the Americans concluded that there was no useful intelligence to be gleaned from leaving our site open and they decided that enough was enough. During the southeast Asian "Anti-terrorism" summit in July, Secretary of State Colin Powell's delegation personally delivered a written order to the local authorities asking them to immediately shut down our site. Our site has remained shut since then, but we have continued to post daily news bulletins on other web-sites, such as Waaqiah.com.

Internet Haganah

He is credited with influencing Aaron Weisburd to set up his Internet Haganah website:

It is fitting that, after a week of Islamist extremists and virulent anti-semites attacking this web site, we are still online, and able to post the 100th little blue AK. The 100th site taken down is www.jihadonline.com. All honors go to Johnathan R. Galt for identifying the site, and to another individual who will remain anonymous for the time being, but without whose assistance we would not have been able to take down the site in question.

That Johnathan R. Galt participated in this take down is fitting, since his own efforts to track down and shut down the web sites of terrorists began shortly after 9-11 and were the primary inspiration for my own efforts. Also worthy of honorable mention are Jeremy Reynalds and bushcountry.org, who together with John Galt encouraged me to develop the Haganah database; the relentless fact checkers at Little Green Footballs for leadership by example;

Islamic News/Jehad is crap!

Galt was also associated with the Islamic News website (formerly at http://islamic-news.co.uk/) which reportedly was a fake website set up to entrap alleged islamists. In September 2002 the website changed fundamentally, now containing the message Jehad is Crap! in big green letters on the homepage.

Screengrab of the Islamic News website from September 2002 with the 'Jehad is Crap!' message, retrieved from the Internet Archive

The message on the homepage was signed with the name Johnathan Galt and ended thus:

Israel belongs to the Jews - because Allah gave that land to them - why, because the Philistines won't act like decent human beings - and only decent humans deserve their own country. If the Philistines don't like it, they should just find somewhere else to live. Except no other country on earth wants to have them because they are not acting like decent human beings.

And Kashmir belongs to the Indians - for the same reasons.

So, Muslims everywhere, let's unite and end this jehadi madness, let's expose and stop the apparatus of terror that is being built up in the Mosques and websites of the U.S.A. and U.K. We especially need Arabic translators to join us because all the real jehadi sites are in Arabic. (Jehadis keep the real juicy stuff from the eyes of the kufir so they will stay ignorant).

Let's Roll,

- Johnathan Galt

Resources

• Johnathan R Galt, old website, which now redirects visitors to the website of Internet Haganah. It claims to be a member of the Anti Terrorism Coalition, the website of which is no longer on the internet.