'We don't speak Arabic here'

"I pretended I was dead, I opened my eyes and didn't move. I couldn't feel the pain anyway. My brother Jalal was lying next to me - he didn't have to do anything because he was at death's door."

Mohammed Tawili, 21, from Tamra was describing the moments after he and his brother were attacked by a gang in a parking lot in the bayside town of Kiryat Yam.

Tawili came to the Zevulon police station to identify his assailants yesterday wearing the same blue shirt, now torn and blood-stained, that he had on at the time of the attack. His arm was in a cast and his nose was bandaged.

"They attacked us with clubs and stones and chains to murder us, not just to attack, because we were Arabs," he said.

On Friday evening, Tawili said, he and his younger brother Jalal, 20, a soldier, and two other friends from Tamra called the girlfriend of one of the group, from Kiryat Yam, and suggested they go out to the club area in the bay. They brought her home at around 2 A.M. One of them escorted her home, and the other three waited in the car listening to Arab music.

Then, Tawili said, a guy came up to them and told them to turn off the music because "we don't speak Arabic here." The two brothers got out of the car, and then a whole group of young men came out "with chains and clubs."

The third friend managed to flee with the car, while the brothers tried to escape on foot.

"They came at us with everything they had - it was a lynch. While they were hitting us they were cursing Arabs," he said.

tags: jews  arabs  violence  israel