Israeli settlers attack Palestinian olive pickers, hospitalise journalist

Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian olive pickers in the West Bank during the olive harvest, and Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was hospitalised. The Sunday Guardian Live reported that settlers also burned trees. Its account identifies Levine as a journalist covering the attack and reports that Palestinian farmers had gone to their groves to gather olives.

Levine told reporters that her attackers kicked her repeatedly. She said her flak jacket and helmet protected her, adding that she believed she might otherwise not have survived. The report does not identify the attackers by name or provide a count of people injured in the incident. It does not state whether anyone was arrested or describe an official investigation or response.

The report places the incident alongside other recent violence connected with olive gathering. It says Ali Hassan Yasser al-Bazzari, 44, was killed during violence involving Palestinians gathering olives near Burqa, northwest of Nablus, on October 7. The account does not specify who killed him.

It also reports that armed Israeli settlers beat Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old Palestinian photographer working for Agence France-Presse, near Aqraba, south of Nablus, on October 6.

The Sunday Guardian Live cited Reuters for the figure that Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation, had recorded at least 170 attacks described as pogroms since September 27, around the start of the olive harvest. That figure is presented as Yesh Din’s recorded count and description, not as an independently verified total in the article.

The report does not give further details about the recorded incidents. Al Jazeera’s headline characterises the attacks as a continuing pogrom during the harvest in the occupied West Bank; Yahoo uses similar wording. NewsCord’s headline says settlers attacked Palestinians and a Washington Post journalist near Abu Falah.

The Sunday Guardian Live account places the farmers’ olive gathering in the West Bank but does not give that location for the attack. These headline descriptions do not add further details about the incident or its aftermath. The account’s immediate focus is the attack on olive pickers, Levine’s hospitalisation and her description of the assault.

It also records the October 6 and October 7 incidents and the Yesh Din tally cited through Reuters. No statement from the settlers, Israeli government bodies or Palestinian officials appears in the account, and it does not report what investigative steps, if any, followed the attacks.