A violent incident in the occupied West Bank has left multiple people injured, including a group of Palestinian olive farmers and a veteran American photojournalist, following a coordinated assault by dozens of masked Israeli settlers. The attack unfolded in the village of Abu Falah, located northeast of Ramallah, where local Palestinian families had gathered to carry out their annual olive harvest—a critical cultural and economic tradition for communities across the region.
Witnesses on the scene confirm that approximately 80 settlers, all wearing masks and black clothing, swept into the village’s olive groves. The group immediately began hurling rocks at the unarmed harvesters before setting multiple sections of the agricultural groves on fire, destroying crops that many local families depend on for their year-round livelihood.
Video footage circulated widely across social media and news platforms captures the assault on Heidi Levine, a photojournalist working for *The Washington Post*. The footage shows Levine being shoved to the ground and repeatedly bludgeoned with sticks by multiple settlers. Emergency medical personnel confirmed that both Levine and one Palestinian were transported to local hospitals for treatment following the attack.
Recounting the ordeal from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for a bandaged hand and multiple contusions, Levine described the sustained ferocity of the attack. “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,” Levine said in a trembling interview. “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.”
Matt Murray, executive editor of *The Washington Post*, released an official statement calling for a full, transparent investigation into the attack. Murray stressed that Levine was clearly marked with visible identification confirming her status as a working journalist at the time of the assault, making the unprovoked attack even more alarming.
Multiple Israeli journalists who witnessed the incident have also spoken out, documenting critical failures by Israeli military forces present in the area. Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, an Israeli journalist and activist who filmed the entire assault, told *The Washington Post* that Israeli soldiers arrived moments before the settlers’ attack, firing tear gas at Palestinian harvesters, then stood by and did nothing to intervene as the assault unfolded. “They did absolutely nothing about the settlers,” Khrzhanovskiy confirmed.
Oren Ziv, another Israeli journalist who witnessed the attack, added that one Palestinian was hit by gunfire during the incident. Multiple other on-scene reporters, including American journalist Jasper Nathaniel, confirmed that at least one of the attacking settlers was armed with a firearm, and Nathaniel reported hearing sustained machine gunfire during the attack. “If she didn’t have a helmet – and if she was Palestinian – she could be dead,” Nathaniel wrote in a post on the social platform X.
This attack was not an isolated incident. Separately, Palestinian state news agency Wafa reported another assault on olive harvesters near the town of Birzeit, just north of Ramallah, carried out by Israeli settlers. In that incident, settlers attacked a 70-year-old Palestinian man, leaving him with fractures and multiple severe injuries, and smashed the windows and frames of several vehicles owned by local Palestinians.
Olive harvesting is one of the most important economic sectors for Palestinians in the West Bank, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income and supporting tens of thousands of households. Attacks on harvesters and the destruction of olive groves by Israeli settlers have been increasingly common in recent years, with human rights groups documenting a steady rise in such violent incidents amid expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.