Washington Post reporter Heidi Levin attacked by Israeli settlers in West Bank: What to know

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Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians living in the West Bank on Friday, as well as a Washington Post photographer who was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Photojournalist Heidi Levine was knocked down, beaten and stripped of her photography equipment by masked settlers, an attack captured on video by other journalists. Other members of the press rescued her from the attackers, while IDF soldiers reportedly stood by.

Levine, who suffered cuts and wounds on his hands and his fingers split from the bone, condemned the attack in a statement, The Washington Post reported. Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who helped Levine escape the attack, said Levine also had fractured ribs, possibly from a stab wound.

Attacks like this are becoming increasingly common in the West Bank, where settler violence – currently targeting the ongoing olive harvest – has worsened. Last week, another AFP photojournalist was beaten with a rifle by settlers, and Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been shot, beaten and intimidated with little to no consequences for the Israeli settlers who target them.

Why settler violence is rising in the West Bank

As my colleague Zach Beauchamp recently explained, the settler movement in the West Bank is clearly illegal under international law. Still, it continues to grow, and it has a friend in the current Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. It also became increasingly violent.

Two current Israeli officials, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, are settlers themselves, and both have used their positions—as finance minister and national security minister, respectively—to advance settler causes, including by making it easier for settlers to commit uncontrolled violence against Palestinians.

The United Nations reported in June that settler attacks had reached “the highest sustained level ever… [an average of] Six attacks a day cause casualties, damage to property or both,” and many Palestinians are forced from their homes by settlers. In late September, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that the expansion of Israeli settlements and settler violence “makes daily life untenable” for Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

As Zucker reports, both settlements and settler violence are deliberate tactics to force more Palestinians off their land, isolate those who remain, and put any potential two-state solution further out of reach.

This violence is likely to only worsen in the coming weeks: Israel is holding elections on October 27, which are likely to result in Netanyahu’s pro-settler government losing power. As a result, the Washington Post reported earlier this month that settlers are “racing to lock in gains” in the run-up to the election with more extreme violence.

➨ Agency life. My colleague Adam Clark Estes gave the keys to his life to a team of artificial intelligence agents for two weeks to see what happened. They sometimes succeeded in rescuing him, he wrote, mostly by completing mundane tasks—but he came away with mixed feelings about the experiment, including the possibility of contributing to a world with more artificial intelligence.