My daughter was radicalized online, says father of 15-year-old terrorist

Terrorist teen’s father, who had been a Shin Bet informant, says online incitement to blame for his daughter’s decision to stab a Jewish man.

By World Israel News Staff

In an emotional interview with Channel 12 News, the distraught father of a 15-year-old Arab girl who stabbed a Jewish man in Haifa in an antisemitic attack said that she became radicalized online.

The man, who was not identified by media for security reasons, is originally from a Palestinian town in Judea and Samaria, according to Hebrew-language news reports.

After serving as an informant for the Shin Bet, he was resettled in Israel due to fears for his life when knowledge of his cooperation with Israeli authorities became known in his community.

He has lived in the northern Israel coastal city of Haifa with his four children for a number of years and is raising the children alone, as his wife had passed away. His daughter’s radicalization came as a huge surprise, he said.

Choking back tears, he told Channel 12 that he knew something was wrong after his daughter, who is the eldest sibling, left her three younger brothers at home alone and unsupervised.

He called her best friend, who informed him that she was planning on “becoming a martyr” and was en route to Jerusalem in order to perpetuate a terror attack against Jews.

Panicking, the father immediately called police, who sprang into action and swept the area looking for his daughter.

“I told the police, ‘Help me, my daughter is gone, she’s planning to kill herself, on the way to Jerusalem.”

Although the police were unable to locate her before she managed to stab and lightly wound a Jewish man, she was arrested in a Haifa park and the victim was taken to a hospital for medical assistance.

The man insisted that the behavior was wildly out of character for his daughter.

Showing his YouTube watch history to the Channel 12 reporter, he noted that in recent days, alongside episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants dubbed in Arabic that were presumably watched by her younger siblings, the teen had viewed numerous videos of the rioting at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The girl later reportedly told investigators that she became enraged by images and videos of Israeli arrests of Palestinian rioters on the Temple Mount, and this had motivated her to carry out a terror attack.

“I’m asking for help for not only my daughter, but for all the youth in this space, in the Arab community, because this is an infectious disease that’s affecting everyone,” the father said.

He also said that he saw his daughter at a recent court hearing, during which her time in detention was extended, and demanded that she apologize to her victim.

“Just think, what if it was your father who was [randomly] stabbed in the street?” the man said he asked his daughter.