A video posted on YouTube shows an Israeli mob rampaging in Jerusalem on 24 February with multiple voices heard shouting the racist slogan, “A Jew is a soul [i.e human], an Arab is a son of a whore.”

This is the same slogan chanted by Israeli mobs who have carried out violent attacks on Palestinians on other occasions.

Some people in this video, though it is unclear if they are participating in the mob, can be seen in costumes traditionally worn for the Jewish festival of Purim which was just marked by Israelis.

Racially motivated beating of Hasan Usraf in Jaffa

At the beginning of the clip, a voice can be heard saying, “Did you hear what they did to the Arab guy? They screwed him with beatings.”

This may be reference to an incident earlier that day when Hasan Usraf, a street-sweeper in Jaffa was brutally beaten by Israeli youths in what police suspect was a racially-motivated attack.

The pro-government newspaper Israel Hayom reported:

About a dozen teenagers assaulted a 40-year-old Arab man early Sunday morning on Tel Aviv’s seaside promenade as he was on his way to work, fracturing his skull and severely beating his head. The victim, Hassan Usraf, told police the youths had yelled racial slurs before attacking.

Quoting Usraf, the report adds:

“I work as a street cleaner on the road from the Opera [Tower] toward Jaffa every night,” Usraf told Israel Hayom, speaking about the attack at the hospital. “Yesterday, I got to work at four in the morning. I saw a bunch of kids sitting on a bench with bongs and alcohol. They looked a little bit intoxicated, and when I went to refill my machine with water they said, ‘Hey, are you Arab? A stinking Arab? You took our whole country.’ “I tried to tell them, ‘Arab, Israeli, we are the same thing,’ and then they starting attacking me. They smashed a bottle over my head, kicked me, sliced me with shards of the broken bottle. I saw the whole world spinning around me. And then they fled.” Afterward, Usraf stumbled bleeding to a friend, who called a Magen David Adom ambulance. Paramedics rushed Usraf to Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where he was treated for skull fractures and deep lacerations on his head. He will undergo eye surgery on Monday due to injuries he suffered in the assault. “I don’t understand why this happens,” Usraf lamented. “I live here, I was born in Israel, I work with Jews and I have a lot of Jewish friends.”

Usraf’s wife told the Arabic-language Palestinian news website Arabs 48, “I thank God my husband is still alive after this savage attack.”

These incidents are only the latest of frequent racist attacks by Israelis targeting Palestinians and Africans.