Islamic State Crisis: Jewish Girl Leaves France to Join Isis

A young Jewish girl is amongst scores of teenagers who have left France to join Isis (Islamic State) militants in Syria and Iraq, according to French intelligence sources.

At least 100 girls and young women have left France to support the organisation, with the number making the trip to the self-styled Islamic caliphate soaring in the last 18 months.

Many are being recruited by online networks of jihadists and radical Islamists, who deliberately target teenagers in search of an identity to become the wives of militants, or to work as housekeeper and babysitters.

Though most of the teenagers leaving France behind are second-generation Muslim immigrants, an anonymous security official told the Daily Mail that one of the runaways was Jewish. The official did not reveal the girl's identity or age.

The Islamic State has frequently decalred its hostility towards Jews.

With Europe's largest Muslim population, many disenfranchised and impoverished, jihadist recruitment networks are particularly developed in France.

Videos distributed on social networking sites including Facebook lure young women by depicting the atrocities of the Assad regime, showing veiled women armed with machine guns, and attacking France for its ban on veils.

Young women from other European countries are believed to have travelled to the region to join Islamic State as well, including approximately 50 from the UK.

Foad El-Bahty, whose 15-year-old sister Nora El-Bahty is believed to have travelled to the region to join Islamic State, said that young female recruits soon discover that life in the Islamic State is very different to that depicted in propaganda.

"As soon as they manage to snare a girl, they do everything they can to keep her," Foad says. "Girls aren't there for combat, just for marriage and children. A reproduction machine."

A new French law could class those who travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State as terrorists, despite the claims of their families that they are victims of brainwashing.

Lawyer Guy Guenoun, who is representing the family of one of the young women who has travelled to Syria said: "It is not at random that these girls are leaving. They are being guided. She was being commanded by remote control, and now she has made a trip to the pit of hell."