Arab-Israeli actor charged over Hamas attack social media posts

JERUSALEM (AFP): A leading Arab-Israeli actor faces charges including “incitement to terrorism” over her social media posts that expressed support for Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, justice officials said Sunday.

Maisa Abdel Hadi, 37, who has played in several series, films and plays, was briefly arrested earlier this month after posting a picture of an elderly Israeli woman being abducted to Gaza by the Islamist militant group.

In her Instagram story, Abdel Hadi, who lives in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth, wrote that “this lady is going for the adventure of her lifetime,” adding laughter emojis.

At least 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed in the attack and some 230 hostages were taken to Gaza, according to Israeli officials.

The Hamas-ruled health ministry in Gaza says more than 8,000 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on the coastal territory.

Abdel Hadi also wrote “our youths are good” in an apparent reference to the man abducting the elderly woman.

Later in the day she posted a picture of a bulldozer breaching the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel during the attack.

“Let’s go Berlin-style,” she wrote in a caption in reference to the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

In addition, the actor asked friends in a WhatsApp group if they “heard the good news” about the attack, before giving details about the attack on southern Israel by Hamas and the abductions.

With 27,000 followers on Instagram, her “stories” in which “she expressed sympathy, encouragement and support to acts of terror,” could “under the circumstances cause an act of terror to take place,” the justice ministry said.

She was also charged with “identifying with a terror group”.

According to a ministry statement, Abdel Hadi’s charges, filed at the Nazareth district court, were the 30th to be filed since the start of the war on similar cases.

Israeli-Arabs account for about a fifth of Israel’s population.