Watch at BNI, "Latest Islamic State (ISIS) video features a child executing an Israeli Arab, accused of spying for Israel."
And at the Wall Street Journal, "Islamic State Video Purports to Show Israeli Arab Slain by Child":
A new Islamic State video purports to show a child executing an Israeli Arab man accused of spying for Israel.More at LAT, "Family of slain Palestinian mourns, denies Islamic State's spy charge."
The more than 13-minute video was released on YouTube by the Islamic State’s propaganda arm, Al Furqan Media. It depicts a lengthy confession by a man who identified himself as Mohammed Said Ismail Musallam from Jerusalem, followed by scenes that show a child holding and firing a handgun edited together with others that appear to show the prisoner being shot in the head.
Emmanuel Nachshon, the spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said his government was investigating the authenticity of the video. Israel’s intelligence agency didn’t comment.
Though Islamic State has long expressed enmity toward Israel, Mr. Musallam’s slaying, if confirmed, would mark the first time the Iraq and Syria-based extremist group has been known to have killed an Israeli citizen.
Last month, Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an interview with a man claiming to be Mr. Musallam’s father, Said Musallam, and he said his son wasn’t a spy. The senior Mr. Musallam, who lives in East Jerusalem, said his son had traveled to Islamic State-held territory last fall and had asked for money beforehand on the pretense that he would be studying at a college near Tel Aviv, according to the article.
“He left that morning and the next day, I tried to call him and the telephone was turned off,” Mr. Musallam’s father was quoted as saying. “I thought that maybe he was busy. After a week we got an email that he wanted to be a martyr and he was giving up everything in his life and his family.”
The newspaper quoted the father saying that he later learned that Mr. Musallam had been jailed for trying to escape to Turkey.
The video adds a new twist to Israeli politics only a week before hotly contested general elections, in which hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has campaigned on a platform of protecting the country from Islamists. Israel has largely stayed out of the conflict. But similar videos from Islamic State have drawn Jordan, Egypt, Britain and the U.S. deeper into the battle.
Tuesday’s video wasn’t the first appearing to show a child killer. Another released by the group in January purported to show a Kazakh child shooting two accused Kazakh spies in the back of the head.
The purported use of a child executioner adds a twist to a propaganda campaign that has repeatedly employed shock tactics to both attract potential recruits and frighten enemies.
Islamic State has released footage showing hostages and accused apostates and traitors shot with handguns and automatic weapons and public crucifixions. Others have been thrown from rooftops, stoned to death, burned alive or decapitated. It is all packaged with Hollywood-quality production values and action-movie flourishes.
The latest video featured a dramatic rendering by the prisoner, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, recounting and acting out his own story in a drawn-out confession. He describes himself as former firefighter in Jerusalem, is shown acting out his Israeli intelligence recruitment, training, deployment and subsequent capture as audio of his confession plays in the background.
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