Dozens of masked Israelis, clad in black and armed with slings, clubs and gas canisters, attacked Palestinians harvesting olives in the Palestinian West Bank village of Abu Falah on Friday.
The mob then set fire to the grove, aided by Israeli soldiers in military jeeps who fired tear gas at the Palestinians, witnesses told Reuters.
Medics told Reuters two people were injured in the attack. One of them was Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine, who was clearly identified as a member of the press.
Video of the attack’s aftermath captured by American journalist Jasper Nathaniel shows Levine, wearing a helmet and a flak jacket reading “PRESS,” slumped over in the road after the attack.
“They clubbed her, kicked her. Pulled her off the ground to beat her more. Robbed her of her equipment. If she didn’t have a helmet — and if she was Palestinian — she could be dead,” Nathaniel said.
“Are you OK?” Nathaniel asks Levine in a second video that shows him and a group of Palestinians rushing to carry her to safety.
“No, no,” she replies.
“You have to run,” he implores.
“I might die, I can’t,” Levine, bloodied, says as the Israelis throw rocks at them. “Let me die.”
From a hospital bed afterward, Levine recalled being overrun and knocked to the ground.
“They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” she told reporters.
Washington Post Executive Editor Matt Murray confirmed the attack in a statement Friday:
“This morning, a Washington Post photographer, Heidi Levine, was attacked by Israeli settlers while reporting in the West Bank,” Murray said. “She was wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist. While we are relieved that Heidi has received medical care and is safe, we are outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job and urge a thorough investigation and follow-through from authorities.”
Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, another journalist on the scene, told The Washington Post the mob seemed to be emboldened by the presence of the Israeli military, which arrived before the attack began. The soldiers “did absolutely nothing about the settlers,” he said.
According to Reuters, a similar attack occurred Friday around Turmus Ayya village, where Israelis attacked farmers harvesting olives and then proceeded to burn three cars.
The Israelis “snuck up like thieves, they caught someone by himself and began to beat him,” Salah Abu Niswa, who witnessed the attack in Turmus Ayya, told the outlet.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a statement that the “approximately 40 Israeli youths” hadn’t attacked anyone but were instead attacked themselves by “some 200 Arabs and far-left activists.”
Netanyahu further claimed that Levine had been “knocked down and immediately helped to her feet by the same unidentified individual,” contradicting the journalist’s own recollection of the attack.
“We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents,” he said.
