Dozens of Israeli settlers beat and robbed veteran Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine Friday during an attack on an olive tree grove in the West Bank.
The Israelis, masked and dressed all in black, beat the Palestinian villagers harvesting olives while chasing out a group of journalists there to document the work. The settlers descended from a nearby hilltop settlement, hurling rocks at the gathering before setting the grove aflame.
Levine was caught in the mix. She was in a vest that read “PRESS” on the front and the back, but the attacking Israelis did not care to differentiate her. Instead, they knocked Levine to the ground, kicked and beat her, and then stole her cameras and phone, reported the Post.
The settlers also threw tear gas into the crowd, according to video footage captured by independent journalist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy. Israel’s military, the Israel Defense Forces, were nearby in vehicles but did not intervene.
Levine told the Post that she was overtaken by the settlers. “They just kept kicking me and kicking me, like probably 50 times,” she told reporters.
Khrzhanovskiy said that settlers beat Levine with sticks while the villagers retreated. Levine was taken to a nearby hospital after the incident.
“This morning, a Washington Post photographer, Heidi Levine, was attacked by Israeli settlers while reporting in the West Bank. She was wearing visible markings clearly identifying her as a journalist,” the executive editor of the paper, Matt Murray, wrote in a statement Friday morning. “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.”
Israel has attacked dozens of journalists throughout its assault on Palestine, violating international law in the process. The attack on Levine came less than two weeks after settlers assaulted AFP photographer Jaafar Ashtiyeh. Israel has also killed at least 247 media workers since the conflict began three years ago, according to a September report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least 192 of those individuals were Palestinian journalists working in Gaza.