Palestinians wounded, US journalist hospitalised after coordinated attack by masked Israeli setters
Palestinians attempting to gather their olive harvests and an American photojournalist have been wounded in an attack by a masked mob of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Witnesses reported that some 80 settlers, masked and clad in black, descended on the village of Abu Falah in northeast Ramallah, slinging rocks at Palestinian families picking olives and setting the groves alight.
Video footage circulated online showed Washington Post journalist Heidi Levine being knocked to the ground and repeatedly beaten by settlers with sticks.
The reporter was hospitalised after the incident, along with another Palestinian, medics said.
Speaking from her hospital bed with a bandaged hand and her voice shaking, Levine told reporters: "I was attacked, pushed to the ground. Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn't even be here, because they just kept kicking me and kicking me, probably fifty times.
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"After like 10 minutes they tried to get me stand up and then they pushed me down again and continued to kick me. I was trying to hold on to my cameras and my pouch...they eventually broke everything off of me," she said.
In a statement, Post executive editor Matt Murray called for a “thorough investigation” into the attack, emphasising that Levine was “wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist”.
Isreali journalist and activist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, who filmed the assault, told the Post that Israeli soldiers arrived shortly before the attack, firing tear gas at Palestinians and doing “absolutely nothing about the settlers”.
Oren Ziv, an Israeli journalist who also witnessed the attack, said one Palestinian was wounded by gunfire, while Reuters reported that at least one of the settlers carried a firearm.
Jasper Nathaniel, another American journalist who was at the scene, reported "machine gunfire" with at "least one Palestinian shot".
"If she didn’t have a helmet - and if she was Palestinian - she could be dead," Nathaniel said in a post on X.
Wafa news agency reported that Israeli settlers assaulted a 70-year-old Palestinian man and smashed several Palestinian-owned vehicles during an attack on olive pickers near the town of Birzeit, north of Ramallah.
Local sources said the elderly man was left with fractures and other injuries following the assault.
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