80 Masked Settlers Storm West Bank Olive Groves, Beating Palestinians and a US Journalist | Israel Politics Post
80 Masked Settlers Storm West Bank Olive Groves, Beating Palestinians and a US Journalist
Witnesses described a coordinated assault near Abu Falah that also saw vehicles torched near Turmus Ayya and an elderly Palestinian injured near Birzeit, as Netanyahu's office offered a starkly different account of who confronted whom.
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By Israel Politics Post Staff·Published
Settler extremists attack Palestinians during the olive harvest near Abu Falah · Source: Social media, via The Times of Israel
Around 80 masked settlers descended on olive groves near the West Bank village of Abu Falah on Thursday, attacking Palestinian harvesters and American photojournalist Heidi Levine in one of the most violent single incidents of this year's olive harvest season, The Times of Israel reported. Levine, badly hurt in the assault, later recounted: "They took all my stuff," and said of the beating itself, "they just kept kicking me and kicking me."
The US Embassy condemned the violence and demanded a full investigation and arrests, while the Washington Post's executive editor said the paper was "outraged by this unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job." Prime Minister Netanyahu's office offered a markedly different version of events, saying the facts remained "unclear and are under investigation" and citing reports that "some 200 Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths," a characterization that puts the scale and direction of the confrontation almost in reverse of what witnesses described.
The Abu Falah attack was not an isolated incident that day. Near Turmus Ayya, settlers set vehicles on fire, and near Birzeit, a 70-year-old Palestinian man was injured in a separate clash, part of a broader pattern of violence that tends to spike every year once the olive harvest gets underway.
Together with the surgery Levine underwent the following day and the diplomatic fallout from a separate attack on European officials days later, the Abu Falah incident has become one of the defining flashpoints of this year's harvest season, less than two weeks before Israel's October 27 election.
