Hacktivist are hurting themselves as much as others:

It’s the same old story that has been going on by mankind since time began. It’s unfortunately easier to motivate the masses with anger and greed than with positive motivations like compassion or hard work. Recently the Pastbin forum posted claims from a Muslim group that has initiated Distributed Denial Of Service (DDos) against 25 US banks.  Their botnet DDos has temporarily denied online banking access to thousands of banking customers. They are doing this to protest a YouTube video that was offensive to Muslims. 

While I don’t doubt that this video was offensive, I don’t think that it is fair to punish an entire society for the act of a few misguided fools. What a shame that this group can’t take their time and talents to pursue legitimate channels against these author(s) of this offensive video. If they knew anything about America, they could better their cause by paying a group of attorney’s to harass this video author publicly, using the media to shame these people into a formal public apology. The public shaming and expense of lawsuits would serve as a better deterrent to others than randomly targeting banking customers who have never even heard of this video. Randomly targeting all Americans is not the answer. Holding an entire nation responsible for one person’s insensitivity rarely furthers ones cause.There type would be better spent gaining sympathy from others than on revenge.