On Friday, Heidi Levine, a Jewish American photojournalist for The Washington Post, was documenting the Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank, when about 20 masked Israeli settlers descended upon her. Levine, who is based in Israel, was wearing a flak jacket clearly marked with the word Press. That didn’t stop the men from knocking her to the ground and brutally beating her with sticks and clubs. She wound up in the hospital with a broken hip, several broken vertebrae, and a finger that was almost entirely detached from her hand.
The incident, which has generated international attention, is only the most prominent recent example of a rising tide of settler violence in Judea and Samaria—the historic name for the territory that became known as the West Bank after Jordan occupied the territory in 1948. In the first six months of 2026, 660 settler attacks killed six Palestinians and wounded 140, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency. A March analysis by the Israel Policy Forum found that there have been more attacks against Palestinians by Jews in the West Bank than by Palestinians against Jews.
All of this is inexcusable. Yet the most pressing problem is not the sheer number of attacks; it is the Israeli government’s apparent disinterest in stopping them.
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Take, for example, the statement released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office while Levine was in the hospital: “The facts surrounding the confrontation near Abu Falah, during which Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was allegedly assaulted,” it said, “remain unclear and are under investigation.”
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