Horrifying footage appears to show a horde of Israelis battering a fleeing ‘Arab’ driver in the street after he was dragged from a car.
In the images, filmed live in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, a driver is seen crashing into another car before being pulled out and savagely beaten by a mob.
Emergency services were reported to have arrived 15 minutes later as the man lay motionless and bloodied on his back in the middle of the street.
More explosions have been heard tonight as Israel carries out air strikes on the Gaza strip in response to Hamas rocket attacks.
At least 74 people have died in the violence since it erupted on Monday, with the UN now warning of an “all-out war”.
US President Joe Biden has said Israel has a “right to defend itself” against the Hamas attacks but voiced confidence that the violence would soon stop.
The shocking video recorded in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, was broadcast on Channel 12 before cutting to an appeal by President Reuven Rivlin to “please stop this madness”.
“The victim of the lynching is seriously injured but stable,” Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital was later reported to have said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Netanyahu issued a video statement in which he pledged to grant police emergency powers for a crackdown.
“This violence is not who we are,” he said. “I don’t care if your blood’s boiling.”
It comes as violence escalated between Israel and Hamas amid warnings from the UN that the region is heading for ‘all out war.’
President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said he was hopeful that a cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians would end soon.
(Image: Getty Images)
(Image: Getty Images)
“My expectation and hope is this will be closing down sooner than later, but Israel has a right to defend itself,” he told reporters at the White House.
Netanyahu’s office said he told the U.S. president that Israel would “continue acting to strike at the military capabilities of Hamas and the other terrorist groups active in the Gaza Strip”.
Early on Thursday Hamas launched rockets at Tel Aviv and toward Jerusalem and Israel vowed to keep pummelling the Islamist faction in Gaza.
The Israeli military said that some 350 of 1,500 rockets fired by Gaza factions had fallen short, potentially causing some Palestinian civilian casualties.
(Image: Getty Images)
Video Unavailable
At least 67 people have been killed in Gaza since violence exploded on Monday, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
Seven people have been killed in Israel, medical officials said.
Hamas signalled defiance, with its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, saying: “The confrontation with the enemy is open-ended.”
It comes after Israeli forces killed a senior Hamas commander and bombed several buildings, including high-rises and a bank, which Israel said was linked to the faction’s activities, on Wednesday.
In the most intensive violence in years jets bombed Gaza and Hamas said it had fired hundreds of rockets at Israel including the city of Tel Aviv.
(Image: Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
One multi-storey residential building in Gaza collapsed and another was heavily damaged after they were repeatedly hit by Israeli air strikes.
During those strikes at least 35 people were killed, including 10 children, in Gaza, and three in Israel.
“Israel has gone crazy,” said a man on a Gaza street, where people ran out of their homes as explosions rocked buildings.
Many in Israel also holed up in shelters as waves of rockets hit its heartland, some blown out of the sky by Iron Dome interceptors.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
“All of Israel is under attack. It’s a very scary situation to be in,” said Margo Aronovic, a 26-year-old student, in Tel Aviv.
The violence has followed weeks of tension in Jerusalem during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, with clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in and around Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the compound revered by Jews as Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
These escalated in recent days ahead of a – now postponed – court hearing in a case that could end with Palestinian families evicted from East Jerusalem homes claimed by Jewish settlers.