Leading Arab Israeli actor Maisa Abd Elhadi detained for supporting Hamas assault
‘World War Z’ star shared image of gunmen taking elderly captive with laughing emojis, captioned photo of terrorists breaching security barrier ‘Let’s go, Berlin style’
Prominent Arab Israeli actor Maisa Abd Elhadi was detained by police after allegedly expressing support for the Hamas terror group’s devastating shock onslaught in Israel, Hebrew media reported Tuesday.
Police confirmed the arrest of “an actress and network influencer, resident of the city of Nazareth, on suspicion of expressions of praise [for terror] and hate speech,” but did not name her.
“The police fight against incitement and support for terrorism continues all the time,” the statement said.
Police will seek to extend her custody at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court later Tuesday.
Abd Elhadi shared images of Yaffa Adar, 85, being taken hostage by Hamas with laughing emojis and another image of Hamas forces breaching Israel’s security barrier with the caption in English “Let’s go, Berlin style,” in an apparent reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Adar was one of over 200 captives of all ages seized by terrorists on October 7 as they rampaged murderously through southern Israel, killing, torturing and mutilating some 1,400 people, mostly civilians.
Abd Elhadi’s posts on social media were slammed by her Israeli on “Temporarily Dead” co-star Ofer Shechter, who wrote, “I’m ashamed of you. You should be ashamed of yourself. You live in Nazareth, act and star in our TV shows and films, and then stab us in the back.”
Abd Elhadi has appeared in several Israeli shows, the Hollywood film “World War Z,” and most recently the British series “Baghdad Central.”
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Separately on Tuesday, Sheikh Raed Salah, one of Israel’s most prominent Islamists, called on “adherents of all religions” to “stop the war” and “spread peace.”
In a short video, Salah, who led the Islamic Movement’s radical Northern Branch until it was banned by the government in 2015 for alleged terror ties, and was convicted in 2017 for nine months for incitement to terror, urged people to “say no to the destruction of mosques, churches, synagogues,” and “say no to the killing of fetuses in the wombs of their mothers.”
It was noteworthy that the Islamist leader called on both sides to stop the violence, without naming them, and not just on Israel, unlike most religious leaders in the Arab and Muslim world.
Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai has praised the Arab Israeli community for refraining from “incidents” since the start of the war with Hamas amid repeated fearmongering by far-right politicians of Jewish-Arab violence in Israel’s mixed cities of the kind that took place two years ago.
“We have to say a good word about their exemplary behavior, with zero incidents,” Shabtai said Sunday at a meeting of the National Security Committee of the Knesset on the subject of “preparedness for a Guardian of the Walls scenario,” a reference to the violent intercommunal riots in mixed Jewish-Arab cities that accompanied a previous conflict with Hamas in 2021.
