A violent scene captured in the middle of the olive harvest season has drawn an unusually sharp response from Washington. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee branded Saturday’s assault on American photojournalist Heidi Levine, a contributor to the Washington Post, as an act of terrorism. The attack took place in the village of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
According to a statement from the US Embassy, more than fifty masked settlers beat and kicked the 63-year-old journalist for over ten minutes while she tried only to shield her face. Levine had been working in the field, documenting the olive harvest, an annual agricultural season that has increasingly become a flashpoint between Palestinian farmers and residents of nearby Israeli settlements. She was hospitalized following the assault.
In a post on X, Huckabee stressed that Levine had clearly visible press credentials on her at the time of the attack, leaving, in his words, no room for doubt about her status as a journalist. He called on Israeli authorities to open an investigation and to prosecute those responsible.
The episode was not isolated. The same day, in the nearby town of al-Taybeh, east of Ramallah, settlers also targeted a European diplomatic delegation that included French, Belgian and Polish representatives, according to the same sources. No detailed account of the delegation’s condition has been released so far.
These incidents fit into a broader pattern. The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is now home to roughly 750,000 Israeli settlers spread across 156 officially recognized settlements and more than 360 outposts considered illegal under international law. Settler violence and Israeli military operations against Palestinians have risen sharply since the war in Gaza began in 2023, turning daily life in many farming villages into a recurring cycle of confrontation.
The ambassador’s unusually blunt public statement comes as several Western capitals voice growing concern over the spread of such violence, which now reaches not only Palestinian civilians but also foreign journalists and diplomats carrying out official missions on the ground.
