Mob attacks with stones (file)
Mob attacks with stones (file)Israel news photo: Flash 90

An Israeli-Arab was attacked by a lynch mob on Thursday in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. His offense? Speaking Hebrew.

Muhammad Abed Abu Rahman, a 24-year-old resident of the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, recalled a harrowing experience in the capital on Thursday while driving through an Arab neighborhood.

While speaking on the phone in Hebrew, locals surrounded his car and began threatening him for “daring” to speak Hebrew near the home of Abu Khder, the 16-year-old murdered in a revenge attack following the killings of three abducted Israeli teens in 2014.

“Someone came up to me, put his hand on the car keys and screamed at me”, Abu Rahman told Walla! News.

He said they shouting to him: "Aren't you ashamed? How can you speak Hebrew in Abu Khder’s neighborhood?"

"I thought I was in a murder situation, they really lynched me," he told the Hebrew-language news site.

About 10 young men quickly approached Abu Rahman’s car brandishing knives and steel rods. Assuming he was Jewish, they stoned his car and screamed threats at him in Hebrew.

Abu Rahman quickly called the police who extricated him from the lynch mob.