A search of her home uncovered documents, electronic devices, phones and other evidence linked to serious security offenses.
By Shula Rosen
Sabah Haniyeh, the sister of former Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, told an Israeli court Thursday that she could not have written messages praising the Oct. 7 attack because she is illiterate, as prosecutors challenged her account during her trial on charges of incitement and identification with a terrorist organization charges.
Haniyeh, 57, testified for the first time at Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court, denying that she sent messages to her brother praising, supporting and encouraging the Hamas massacres.
She said relatives regularly used her cellphone and helped her handle written messages.
One message attributed to Haniyeh read: “God, keep them occupied with their dead bodies and take them, kill them — and leave no one.”
“I lived in Gaza and did not go to school,” Haniyeh told the court. “I do not know how to read or write. If someone sends me a good morning message, I ask whoever is at home what it says. I have a book and an electronic pen that reads the text aloud to me. I press the buttons and it works.”
Prosecuting attorney Masaad Masaad challenged that defense, citing testimony from Haniyeh’s daughter-in-law in December 2025 that she prays from the Quran.
The daughter-in-law, who was later declared a hostile witness over contradictions with her earlier police account, subsequently said she meant Haniyeh opens the Quran rather than necessarily reading it.
Defense attorneys presented an electronic pen they said Haniyeh uses to hear the Quran read aloud. Haniyeh had difficulty operating the device in court.
Questioned about Oct. 7, Haniyeh said she had hidden in a basement and did not know what was happening.
She continued to deny sending the alleged messages on Oct. 9, saying her children and grandchildren had access to her phone and her daughters-in-law assisted with correspondence.
Haniyeh, a Tel Sheva resident, was arrested in April 2024 on suspicion of maintaining contact with Hamas operatives, identifying with the terrorist organization, incitement and supporting acts of terrorism in Israel.
Police said a search of her home uncovered documents, electronic devices, phones and other evidence linked to serious security offenses and hundreds of thousands of shekels.
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