That Enigmatic Puzzle

"I know the father, I know the grandfather, they are good people. They have no idea why he went there and how he did it. They invested a lot of money in him ... and they were waiting to reap the benefits. And this person showed no signs, he did not tell anybody."
Salim Abu al-Qiyan, Hura, Israel

"He was very smart, very sharp. The last person you would have suspected to be violent. He is the kind of doctor any department head would want."
Dr. Yosef Mishal, department head, Barzilai Medical Center, Israel

"[There was] something there [attracting seemingly successful young men]."
"He (Abu Al-Qiyan) is the right profile for success. No one will answer the clear question: what happened there? But somebody has to do that."
Yousef Abu Jaffer, Hura municipal treasurer

Should 'somebody ... do that', that somebody would have a lot to share with other inquisitively desperate governments who also would like to discover precisely what it is that lures young Muslims from the comfort of their settled communities and their future aspirations to surrender it all to join the fanatical jihadists who make up the Islamic State.

Of course, human nature being idiosyncratic, and people so diverse both in their backgrounds their potential successes and failures, their dreams of the future, their fallibility, their satisfactions, there can be nothing 'precise' that would outline unfailingly the absolute formula that works for success in recruiting seemingly balanced characters to fanatical jihadism.

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  Photo By Uncredited/AP  This undated photo released by Barzilai Medical Center shows Othman Abu al-Qiyan, an Israeli Bedouin

Neither his family nor his community, nor government authorities and security agencies thereof, let alone his professional colleagues in his discipline of choice where he excelled as a promising physician, have any idea what propelled Othman Abu al-Qiyan to discard his dream of the healing profession to embark on the killing profession of violent jihad.

He was recognized as a quiet young man, an absolute genius, top of his class in Israel, living in the minority Arab village of Hura, and becoming a star medical student and finally, hospital intern. Hura is in Israel's southern Negev desert. Many residents choose to serve in the Israeli army. The country's Shin Bet security service estimates that a mere 30 Israeli Arabs have chosen to leave for Syria, to fight there.

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  Photo By Tsafrir Abayov/AP  This Monday, Oct. 20, 2014 photo, shows a view of Hura, a Bedouin village in the Negev desert, Israel

But that this talented young man with a promising future in medicine should be among them came as a shock. In his late 20s, Abu al-Qiyan represents the first Bedouin to leave Israel for that purpose. His family, a large extended one, one of the two most powerful clans in Hura, has close ties to the Israeli establishment. Many Israeli soldiers come from his extended family. Abu al-Qiyan's departure from the norm is abhorrent to them.

He was to begin specialization at Beersheba's Soroka hospital in May. And then he vanished. All the family members knew was what he told them, that he left for a vacation in Turkey accompanied by a cousin. Later, he called his family from Syria to inform them where he had left his belongings. And telling them he would meet them next in paradise.

Some of his family travelled to Turkey in a vain attempt to discover his whereabouts, in hopes they could persuade him to return. But an anonymous message arrived in August to inform his family that he had been killed in the first wave of U.S. air strikes against the Islamic State. It wasn't known whether he volunteered as a medic or as a fighter for ISIS.

Speculation locally is that he was radicalized while studying in Jordan, or that he was recruited online. But no one ever heard him speak of anything indicating his turn toward Islamist jihad. They recall his dual loves; medicine and Islam. Even the Shin Bet, with all their experience and insider knowledge are perplexed; they have no intelligence on Othaman Abu al-Qiyan.

Suleiman Azbarga, a 29-year-old local businessman who had studied with Abu Al-Qiyan in Jordan is not among those in his community who have expressed some support for the goal of an Islamic caliphate. "There may be a few who feel pride in this, but these are very, very few The majority of people here feel disappointment, and a sense of loss."