TEHRAN – In the latest blow to the Israeli myth of co-existence with Palestinians, a mob of extremist Jews attacked, and in some cases lynched, defenseless Palestinians living inside Israel, a move that prompted some Israeli leaders to warn of a civil war.

As the Israeli army continues to pound residential areas in Gaza with air raids and artillery shells, far-right Israeli extremists step up their brutal campaign of lynching Palestinian Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship, thereby shattering oft-repeated Israeli propaganda that Israel is a democracy where all minorities enjoy human rights. 

Over the past few days, with the outbreak of the ongoing flare-up between Gaza and Israel, several Palestinians were killed or severely injured by far-right Israeli gangs who called for slaughtering Palestinians. One of the most heart-breaking cases of harassment against Palestinians happened near Tel Aviv when a group of Jewish zealots attacked a man they believed to be an Arab.

Footage of the incident was aired on television Wednesday night. The shocking images show a man being forcibly removed from his car and beaten by a crowd of dozens until he lost consciousness, AFP reported, adding that the attack, broadcast by public broadcaster Kan, took place on the seafront promenade of Bat Yam, south of Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv.

“The victim of the lynching is seriously injured but stable,” Tel Aviv's Ichilov hospital said in a statement, without revealing his identity.
In addition, Israeli terrorists smashed shops owned by Palestinians in the Green Line zone, a demarcation line separating Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 and those occupied in 1967.

The Associated Press reported that a group of black-clad Israelis smashed the windows of an Arab-owned ice cream shop in Bat Yam and ultranationalists could be seen chanting, “Death to Arabs!” on live television.

This hatred against an ethnic group that is supposed to be part of the Israeli people resulted in the killing by Jewish extremists of an Arab man in Lod, a city with both Jewish and Arab residents about 15 miles south of Tel Aviv. During a funeral for this man, angry protestors clashed with security forces. The deceased man died after Jewish extremists pelted his car with stones, prompting the so-called Israeli Arabs to hit back.
 
Yair Revivo, the mayor of Lod, described what happened in Lod as “civil war,” calling for the Israeli army to suppress Arabs. “An intifada [uprising] erupted in Lod, you have to bring in the army,” he said. The drama also involved the use of emergency powers by Israel over an Arab community for the first time since 1966.

The Lod outburst of anger revealed deeper grievances among the Arab community, which have long been buried deep under the Israeli propaganda about co-existence, according to Arab activists in Lod. 

Ghassan Munayyer, a Lod-based activist, said the veneer of coexistence conceals deeper disparities, including in housing and infrastructure, comparing its Arab neighborhoods to “refugee camps,” according to the Associated Press. 

“The Jews love saying there’s coexistence. They go out to eat in an Arab restaurant and they call it coexistence,” he said. “But they don’t see Arabs as equal human beings who have rights that they have to respect.”

The outbreak of communal clashes inside Israel caused Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to warn of civil war after the decades-long, pent-up frustrations among Israeli Arabs broke out in the way of clashes with security forces. 

Rivlin, who failed to denounce his regime’s excessive use of violence against Palestinians, described the rioting in several Israeli cities as “senseless civil war.”

Israeli politicians have sought to put an end to this war by assuaging concerns over domestic extremism. But the war is unlikely to end anytime soon so long as Israel cold-bloodedly kills defenseless children and women in Gaza and desecrates places of sanctity for Muslims in Jerusalem (al-Quds) especially the al-Aqsa Mosque, which stands as the first Qiblah (direction of prayer) and the third-holiest site in Islam. 

As Israel continues to cry foul at the rockets coming from the beleaguered Gaza, it’s worth noting that the latest round of violence began after Israel moved to evict Palestinian families from their ancestral homes in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, something that left the Palestinians with no option but to hit back.