“I went with my wife and children to my son’s gravesite,” Rabbi Cohen told Arutz Sheva. “At the end of the road on Har Hazeisim, I saw a group of Arab youths — they immediately began throwing stones at our car.

“[Arab] youths have tried three separate times to hurt us along that road. I tried to travel in a zigzag pattern [to avoid them] and they were literally chasing after us.”

After trying in vain to avoid the mob, Rabbi Cohen found himself cornered. As rocks rained down on his car, he decided he had little choice but to draw his weapon.

“I got out with a drawn pistol; it was a matter of time before I would use it. I stress that these were not children, but teenagers who were not afraid to heave rocks at commuters on a main road.

“The Arab teenagers escalated this to the extreme, to the point where we almost came to live fire.”

Rabbi Cohen noted that local police were conspicuously absent throughout the attack.

“There is also no doubt that the police are guilty of incompetence … It took those teenagers 40 minutes to get to us.”

Noting the potential threat to life from such assaults, he called upon security forces to deal with the phenomenon of Arab rock-throwers.

“They need to understand that a rock could severely injure someone for life. Why isn’t this important to the state and the police?”

Clearly, he said, “the prime minister does not consider rock attacks on Israeli citizens important … Har Hazeisim is a holy place for the entire Jewish people, and we cannot allow this lawlessness to continue.”