Israeli teacher arrested over links to Islamic State

A teacher from a predominantly Israeli-Arab town in the Galilee was arrested on suspicion of “being associated with the Islamic State,” police said Monday.

The man, 24, is a teacher of Islam at a high school in Kafr Kanna, where he lives. A search of his house revealed books, documents and files relating to banned terror organizations, including an Islamic State flag, police said.

The teacher “was recently in Jordan, and is being questioned by police in connection with being associated with the Islamic State,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel.

“We confiscated materials from his house, including computers and flags and other [items] connected with the Islamic State…he brought back the materials from Jordan, and the investigation is continuing,” he said.

The man is to appear before the magistrate’s court in Hadera on Wednesday to be formally charged. Possession of materials from a designated terror organization is illegal under Israeli law.

Israeli officials, along with European governments, have become increasingly concerned about citizens traveling abroad to join Islamic State fighters in Syria or Iraq, where thousands of foreigners are believed to have joined the jihadist organization.

Last week, an Israeli citizen was found guilty of traveling to an enemy country and joining Islamic State during a four-month stay in Syria earlier this year.

The group was officially declared a terror organization by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier this year, giving Israeli officials wider tools to prosecute suspected members.

Ahmad Sorbaji, 23, of Umm al-Fahm, was found by the Haifa District Court to have entered Syria, a country with which Israel is officially at war, and to have received military training from Syrian rebel groups, including Islamic State, with the intention of fighting in the Syrian civil war. His sentence is to be handed down at a later date.

Some 10 Arab citizens of Israel have left the country to join the Islamic State, a Shin Bet security service source was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as saying in September. An additional number is believed to have traveled to join more moderate rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army. Several Israeli Arabs have reportedly been killed in Syria.

Earlier this month it was reported that Rabiya Shahade, 26, from Nazareth, has been fighting in Syria with Islamic State and has been in that country for about a year. Shahade, who goes by the name Abu Musaav Alsafuri in Syria, was described in a Yedioth Ahronoth report as having had Christian and Jewish friends before he became radicalized. He left behind in Israel a wife and newborn son.

In May, Idris Abu Alqayan, 23, a Bedouin Israeli citizen from the Negev, was charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and aiding an unlawful exit from the country after he allegedly helped two family members leave Israel for Syria to join the Islamic State.