Israeli Arab who joined ISIS appeals to Netanyahu to get him home
An Israeli Arab who left Israel to fight with ISIS in Syria has decided he had enough of the terror organization and wants to return home. Only, he can’t.
Siaf Sharif Daoud, 29, from a small village in central Israel, is currently being held captive by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish organization, in Syria after attempting to escape ISIS and return to Israel.
His story was made public in an interview with the BBC and a TV channel from the United Arab Emirates in which Daoud addressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his family in Hebrew.
“Everyone knows what he (Netanyahu) had done for one soldier,” Daoud said, referring to the return of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. “You are prime minister of a democratic state. Many countries took back their citizens from here.”
Israeli Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, enjoy freedom of religion in the Jewish state and generally have good lives. But some, like Daoud, are not satisfied. Daoud said that in 2015, as he was getting more religious as a Muslim, he was enticed to join ISIS. because “the publications about the caliphate attracted” him.
Unfortunately for Daoud though, anything associated with Israel is suspicious among ISIS members, including fighters that leave Israel to fight on their behalf.
“In ISIS, every time anyone wanted to rat someone out, he would say that that person is Israeli – and that is it,” he said.
