Israeli man sentenced to five years in prison for helping Hezbollah terrorist group

The Haifa District Court on Monday sentenced an Israeli man to five years in prison an Israeli man for supporting Hezbollah by providing the Lebanese terror group with photos and videos from sites in the country, which were then published as part of its propaganda efforts against the Jewish state.

Mahmoud Jabarin, 37, from the northern town of Umm al-Fahm, was convicted under a plea bargain in which he admitted to contacting Hezbollah operatives and helping the organization, which has vowed to destroy Israel.

Prosecutors said Jabarin was in contact with two Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon and starting in 2018 provided them with photos of the Lebanon border fence, Hadera power station, Megiddo Prison, Petah Tikva and other locations.

The content was then published via social media and touted as showing Hezbollah’s ability to penetrate into Israeli territory as part of its psychological warfare against the Jewish state.

“The defendant agreed and acted on the request [of the two operatives] out of a desire to assist Hezbollah’s media, propaganda and war effort against Israel,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

In addition to the five-year sentence, which includes time served from the date of his arrest on February 18, 2019, Jabarin was given another 12 months’ suspended sentence effective for three years from his release from prison.

He has 45 days to appeal the sentence.

Prosecutors said that Jabarin began to support Hezbollah in 2005 and chose Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as his religious guide.

In the years that followed, he maintained two Facebook accounts, each with hundreds of followers, where he would post messages of support for the Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Source: Times Of Israel