Islamic State's latest victim - 19-year-old Mohammed Said Ismail Musallam, an Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem who joined ISIS not long ago and whose beheading was published on YouTube Tuesday night - was "brainwashed" into joining the group, his father Said said Wednesday.
"I don't know how they brainwashed him, how they gave him pills before the flight [to Syria], I don't know what they did to him," Said stated in an Army Radio interview Wednesday morning. "He says he was promised paradise, girls, villas, money. They promised him everything."
Said noted that the radicalization of his son appeared out of nowhere, and that Musallam's family was not involved in extremism.
"What was missing here?" he asked. "He served [for Israel] in National Service. I work, his brother works, his mother also works."
Regarding ISIS's claims that Musallam "worked for the Mossad," he said: "The Mossad? What Mossad? Would the Mossad recruit a 19 year-old boy? They don't know him from Adam."
He added that his son fit in as well, and that "everyone who knew him, loved him."
Said noted that he has not seen the brutal execution video; he has a heart condition, and his three other sons prevented him from seeing it.
Mohammed had done National Service at a fire station in Jerusalem and graduated from a firefighting course in Rishon Lezion in November, he added.
But instead he ended up on a flight to Turkey, and then in Syria.
Mohammed was even in touch with his family for a while.
"Actually, he was against ISIS," he insisted. "By images he saw on television, what ISIS do in the world, he was against them."
Mohammed apparently told his brothers "not to believe everything you see on TV," but Said predicted he got caught up.
"He likely tried to come back, and they probably wouldn't let him go back," he predicted. "They had to prevent it. If Mohammed would have returned, he could have told [Israeli authorities] about everything he saw there. It's obvious."
About two months after Mohammed left, Said got the call from abroad. An anonymous man told him his son was in prison and that he had tried to escape, but had been caught; the caller pledged to help him if he managed to escape.
But Mohammed never got there - and Said says the authorities did not actively help search for him before he was killed.
"I swear to you, since Mohammad's abduction was announced a month ago [. . .] nobody called me," he said. "Not investigators, not the Mossad, not the police. No one."