Israel just let its own ally's journalist get beaten by settlers
1 hour ago · 17 October 2026Share
Arson by Israeli settlers in Al-Mughayyir, Ramallah, April 2024. سكان المغير · CC0
Israeli settlers just attacked Palestinian villages across the West Bank.
It happened earlier today, during the annual olive harvest.
And they beat a journalist on camera while she was doing her job.
So let's start with where. The attack hit Abu Falah, a village northeast of Ramallah.
Around 80 masked settlers moved into the olive groves. Some carried gas canisters. Some used slings to fire rocks.
Heidi Levine was there. She's a veteran American photojournalist who's covered the West Bank for The Washington Post for years.
She was wearing a protective vest and helmet. Both clearly marked PRESS.
They beat her anyway.
Levine says she was kicked about 50 times, for roughly ten minutes, after they knocked her to the ground. Her cameras and her phone were stolen during the attack.
She's now in a government hospital in Ramallah. Her condition is stable.
From her hospital bed, Levine says quote "they just kept kicking me and kicking me". She says without her flak jacket and helmet, she probably would not have survived.
Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who watched it happen, says settlers beat her, clubbed her, robbed her, pulled her back up, and beat her again.
Here's the part that makes this worse. Israeli military vehicles arrived while the beating was still going on.
Soldiers fired tear gas. They did not stop the beating.
Separately, a Palestinian man was shot, reportedly in the leg, by Israeli soldiers during the same incident.
And this wasn't the only attack that day. Settlers also hit Turmus Ayya, burning vehicles and olive trees. And Burqa, where four Palestinians were injured.
This has been building for weeks. Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group, has recorded at least 170 settler attacks since 27 September, when the olive harvest began.
Ten days ago, an AFP photographer, Jaafar Ashtiyeh, was beaten with rifle butts near Aqraba.
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Olive groves near Bethlehem. File photo.Matson Collection · Public domain
Nine days ago, a Palestinian man, Ali Hassan Yasser al-Bazzari, was killed during an attack on olive harvesters near Burqa.
The UN's humanitarian office says settler attacks have killed one Palestinian and damaged more than 2,500 olive trees this harvest season. It has documented more than 1,600 settler attacks across the West Bank between January and August.
Matt Murray, The Washington Post's Executive Editor, said the paper was outraged by the attack and called for a thorough investigation.
Then Benjamin Netanyahu's office answered. Netanyahu is Israel's Prime Minister, and he's facing an election in under two weeks.
His office said the facts around the confrontation "remain unclear and are under investigation". It also said Israel condemns violence against anyone.
But here's the twist. The same statement said 200 Arabs and far-left activists had confronted around 40 Israeli youths. And it said footage showed Levine helped back to her feet by the same person who knocked her down.
That account does not match the video. It does not match the witnesses either.
Jasper Nathaniel describes a beating that went on for minutes, with Levine knocked down, robbed, and beaten again. Reuters and AFP footage shows the same thing.
So Matt Murray answered Netanyahu's office directly. He said quote "Our photographer was clearly marked as Press. She was clearly beaten."
That's a Washington Post editor telling the Israeli Prime Minister's office, in public, that its own account is wrong.
The Foreign Press Association says Levine sustained moderate injuries. It also says its repeated calls for Israeli authorities to act on settler violence have been ignored.
The Israeli military has acknowledged that a female journalist was injured during a confrontation, and says troops dispersed those involved. No arrests have been announced.
A local settler council, the Binyamin Regional Council, said the Palestinian Authority organised the confrontation. Journalists who witnessed the attack dispute that.
So what happens now? Nobody knows.
No settlers have been named. No settlers have been arrested. Nobody knows exactly how many villages were hit, or how many Palestinians were hurt across all of them. Nobody knows whether the investigation leads anywhere at all.
Heidi Levine is still recovering in hospital in Ramallah.
And the footage of her beating is now the thing Israel's own government and its closest ally's newspaper cannot agree on.
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