Abed a-Rahman. Photo: Screenshot.

An Arab Israeli was attacked on Tuesday by Palestinians who heard him speaking Hebrew, the Israeli news site Walla reported on Thursday.

Mohammad Abed a-Rahman, a 24-year-old from the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh, said that while he was driving in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, he stopped to answer a work-related phone call. Suddenly, someone approached his car, “grabbed his keys, and shouted in Hebrew, ‘Aren’t you ashamed? How dare you speak Hebrew in the neighborhood of Mohammad Abu Khdeir,’” referring to the 16-year-old Palestinian kidnapped and murdered in July 2014 by Jewish vigilantes avenging the deaths of three Israeli teenagers who had been abducted and killed by Hamas terrorists — an event that contributed to the launching of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza shortly thereafter.

Suddenly, said Abed a-Rahman, a  number of cars blocked the road, and their occupants emerged, throwing “rocks, iron bars, whatever they could get their hands on, at my car.” Abed a-Rahman – who wears a pro-IDF bracelet – kept trying to explain himself to them in Arabic, but to no avail.

“They must have thought I was a Jew,” he said.

After photographing the cars involved, he called the police and was extricated by officers who arrived at the scene. However, he said, he was surprised that at the police station, the detective suggested he try to engage in a “sulha,” or Arab reconciliation, with his assailants.

Apparently, the perpetrators had told the police that they could all work it out among themselves, said nrg. But Abed a-Rahman’s brother told him not to engage in any “sulha” with the attackers, and lodge a formal police complaint.