Israeli Arab teenager Muhammad Zoabi has finally emerged from hiding. Photo: Twitter

Muhammad Zoabi, the Israeli-Arab teenager who was forced to go into hiding over the summer after he publicly expressed support for Zionism and the State of Israel, has finally resurfaced with a defiant post on his Facebook page.

“My dear friends, the last half year was not an easy period of my life. I had to hide, go under ground, keep a low profile like what if i have done a nasty crime,” Zoabi wrote, in hesitant English. “I simply went and still going through things that teenagers rarely go through.”

The 17 year-old, who describes himself as a “proud Israeli Arab Muslim Zionist,” said that his plight was partly the result of his stance against anti-Semitism and “Islamic and Arab extremism.”

Most importantly, Zoabi said, was his effort to “show the world the real face of regular Arabs and Muslims who’re simply sick of their leaders’ corruption and unlimited hate.”

Zoabi was forced to go underground for his outspoken support of the three Israeli teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah, who were abducted and murdered last June by a Hamas terror cell in the West Bank. “Bring them back and you better bring them back now!” he demanded, in a widely shared YouTube posting.

The teenager, who hails from the northern city of Nazareth, initially found shelter at the home of Kay Wilson, an Israeli victim of terror, before fleeing to the United States.

Zoabi is a cousin of Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of the Knesset who frequently engages in incitement against Israel. An article by David Gerstman on the popular Legal Insurrection blog quoted Professor William Jacobson of the Cornell University Law School saying that “Haneen Zoabi could probably count on ‘an endowed professorship at Columbia, or presidency of the American Studies Association.'”

Added Gerstman: “But her cousin Mohammad’s plight is mostly ignored.”