ISRAELI Communist Party-led coalition Hadash has called for a “Jewish-Arab partnership against racism, hatred and violence” in the face of the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s willingness “to let violent fascist gangs riot unhindered.”

Jewish extremists have led attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel in cities including Jerusalem and Lod, staging marches chanting “death to Arabs,” attacking homes and shops and torching cars.

Followers of the far-right terrorist rabbi Meir Kahane, who died in 1990, dragged a Palestinian from his car on Wednesday and beat him up in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, while riots in Lod in response to the shooting of a Palestinian by a Jewish man saw an explosion of communal ethnic violence. Riots have also erupted in Haifa and Jaffa.

Nadav Argaman, head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, said that he would not tolerate ethnic violence “by Arabs nor Jews” and would “not allow violent lawbreakers to carry out terrorism on the streets of Israel.”

Hadash said that “the winds from the Netanyahu government heated up Jerusalem, deported families and violently suppressed demonstrations. They continue to set the country on fire.

“The only way to deal with the flames that threaten to destroy us is through solidarity, standing together and a Jewish-Arab struggle against racism, hatred and violence.”

It called for support for another protest against the eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrar neighbourhood of East Jerusalem and pointed out that joint Jewish-Arab protests calling for an end to the Israeli assault on Gaza and to racist violence had attracted over 300 people in Rahat and a similar number in Haifa.