Béate Vervaecke 💬

“Let me die,” American photojournalist Heidi Levine repeats to journalists Jasper Nathaniel as they try to outrun masked Israeli settlers who attacked her on Friday while she covered the olive harvest in the West Bank village of Abu Falah, near Ramallah. Around 80 settlers attacked Palestinian olive harvesters in the village, AP reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated six people injured in two attacks in Abu Falah. Levine, a freelancer for the Washington Post, told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the settlers knocked her down and kicked her for at least 10 minutes, even after she identified herself as an American journalist. They stole her camera, phone and bag. She was eventually taken to a hospital in Ramallah. "The IDF provided cover, with tear gas and machine guns, while the settlers beat" Levine "nearly to death," Nathaniel wrote, adding that soldiers then shot a Palestinian bystander and aimed their guns at and shoved paramedics trying to treat him. AP photos and circulating videos show Israeli soldiers standing over a wounded Palestinian man after they shot him. Andrey X, an activist also at the scene, said a Palestinian man "saved our lives from the settler-terrorists who attacked the olive harvesters and journalists” armed only with a slingshot.