Canadian- Israeli Gill Rosenberg recently made waves among the international press for heading to Syria to join Kurdish forces in their battle against the radical Islamic State terror group. Rumors that she had been taken captive by ISIS set off a maelstrom in the press.
On Monday night, she posted on her Facebook page that she had not kidnapped, and was “safe and secure.” Her post read: “I don’t have Internet access or any communication devices with me for my safety and security. I can’t reply regularly and only happened to have a chance to log in and see these #$%@ news stories. Ignore the reports I’ve been captured.”
Rosenberg signed off on her short post by saying,”Yalla, Acharai!”, a phrase which combines Arabic and Hebrew and is familiar to IDF personnel and can be translated to mean “Come on, follow me!”
Reports of Rosenberg’s kidnapping began surfacing on Sunday. The sources were linked to various jihadi and Palestinian social media forums. They claimed that Rosenberg had been kidnapped while fighting with the Peshmerga forces in Kobani, Syria.
According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, the Shin Bet or Israeli Security Agency told the Post that “there are no further details at this time,” and neither corroborated nor denies the IS rumors. According to the same report however, Kurdish sources approached by Israel Radio reporter Eran Cicurel expressed doubt over the claims made by the Islamic State. They claimed that Rosenberg was not in Kobani and that reports of Rosenberg’s capture were probably terrorist propaganda.
Rosenberg, 31, hails from British Columbia, Canada. She is a civil aviation pilot who enlisted in the IDF’s search-and-rescue unit. In the past, Rosenberg has been accused of embezzling large amounts of money from elderly US citizens via a phone scam with a group of Israelis she met in Hebrew language class (ulpan) while in Israel. She was arrested in 2009 and extradited to the United States where she served prison time, according to one of her lawyers.
The story of Gill joining the Kurdish forces in Syria was first reported by Israeli radio. In the report Gill recounted how smugglers helped her cross from Iraq into Syria in order to join the Kurdish ranks. “They (the Kurds) are our brothers. They are good people. They love life, a lot like us, really,” Rosenberg said. Rosenberg joined the Kurds after contacting the guerrillas fighters over the Internet.
