Said Musallam said his son, an Israeli citizen, abandoned his national service in the fire department to join IS.
He said the last time they spoke by phone Mohammed was in Raqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the jihadist “caliphate” in northern Syria.
He said his son wanted to return home after having completing basic training.
He said he was very worried about his son’s fate at the hands of IS, which has brutally executed many prisoners in recent months.
Asked if he could raise a ransom in exchange for his son, the father said he was a mere bus driver with no property or assets to his name.
The family lives in the Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Neve Yaakov in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Said Musallam was born in the occupied West Bank but said his four children have Israeli passports.
According to Dabiq, Mohammed was recruited in Neve Yaakov by a Jewish neighbour working for the security services and was given away by his behaviour and his refusal to obey a commander.
The execution video released Tuesday was one of several produced by IS, starting with the beheading last August of American journalist James Foley and more recently including the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot and the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians.
Dalia Ghanem-Yazbeck, an analyst at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the videos tend to coincide with jihadist military setbacks.
“With each military reverse… IS comes out with a shock video so that people will talk about them. This is a way to compensate for the military defeat with propaganda,” she said.
Since early this month, Iraq forces have besieged Tikrit, a city captured by IS in a lightning sweep across the country’s north last summer.
The video campaign is also seen by analysts as a recruitment vehicle for IS, which is thought to have between 25,000 and 80,000 fighters, including thousands of foreigners.
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