Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israel's Jewish and Arabs citizens against taking the law into their own hands as he urged them to stop rioting.
"The Jewish state will not tolerate pogroms against our citizens. We will not allow our Jewish citizens to be lynched or to live in fear of murderous Arab gangs. We will not tolerate the torching of synagogues and the torching of property," Netanyahu said late Saturday night in the aftermath of a weekend of violent attacks.
"At the same time, we will not allow Jews to take the law into their own hands and attack innocent Arabs, or lynch an innocent Arab; there was one such case, such effort. We will not allow these attacks on innocent Jews or Arabs alike," Netanyahu added.
"To tolerate this unacceptable vigilantism and violence is to pave a way to anarchy," he warned.
"Israel is the Jewish and democratic state, where all our citizens, Jews, Arabs and everyone else, are equal before the law and will receive equal protection from those who enforce the law," Netanyahu said.
US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu about the violence earlier in the evening.
According to the White House, "The president shared his grave concern about the intercommunal violence across Israel. He welcomed the statements by the prime minister and other leaders opposing such hateful acts and encouraged continued steps to hold violent extremists accountable and to establish calm."