Video of Israeli Arab gunman offers glimpse into manic, murderous psyche

On the one hand, Nashat Milhem appears devoted to a murderous jihadist ideology, and on the other is inebriated and manic.

By BEN HARTMAN
Videos from Tel Aviv gunman's phone released; Shin Bet finds ISIS influence
The video starts out innocently enough – a young knucklehead in a hoodie walking down the street drinking a beer, talking about all the drugs he’s done. By about the one-minute mark, though, things get dark and take on a much different vibe.
The video clips from terrorist Nishat Milhem’s cellphone that the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) released on Wednesday paint a picture of a man who, on the one hand appears devoted to a murderous jihadist ideology, and on the other is inebriated and manic, boasting about drugs when not talking about wanting to kill non-Muslims and Shi’ites and seeing US President Barack Obama convert to Islam or die.
After Milhem is seen walking down the street, he’s shown lying down, looking up at the camera as he addresses the US president, telling him: “Obama, you crusader, convert to Islam,” adding that if does not he’ll be crucified.
The words are harsh, but off and on Milhem’s eyes go very wide; he seems not relaxed, and, maybe, not entirely well – perhaps lending credence to the words of acquaintances and relatives who described him during the manhunt as mentally disturbed, if not mentally incapacitated.
In a third segment of the video, he is looking down at the camera, forceful and seemingly more confident while holding a bullet in his right hand.
“My name is Nashat Milhem, I’m from this village, this neighborhood,” he says, and again addresses the enemies he plans to target, adding that “the next attack will be in Tel Aviv” and that “those Jew bastards [will] know who they messed with.”
In the fourth clip, he tells Shi’ites he’ll kill them one by one, and then curses them loudly and repeatedly until the video cuts out.
The phone was found on the morning of the murders by a passerby in Ramat Aviv, where Milhem had discarded it. The location of the phone led investigators to focus their search first on north Tel Aviv.