A video of a Jewish settler attack on Palestinian farmers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Sunday shows a masked settler using a large club to beat an elderly Palestinian woman who was attempting to harvest olives.
Jasper Nathaniel, an American journalist who recorded the attack, said the IDF led him and a group of Palestinian farmers into a settler ambush in the village of Turmus Ayya near the central West Bank City of Ramallah, on the first day of olive harvesting season.
Nathaniel said the woman who was hit with the club was struck multiple times and beaten unconscious. According to Ihab Hassan, a Palestinian activist with the Agora Initiative, the woman “has been moved to the intensive care unit (ICU) after suffering a brain hemorrhage caused by the attack.”
The same settler also used the club to attack activists who were in the village to provide protection for the Palestinian farmers, injuring at least two of them.
Nathaniel said that the US embassy said they could do nothing when he asked for help. “If I am killed in the West Bank, please know that I blame you personally,” he wrote on X in a post addressed to US Ambassador Mike Huckabee.
“I was set up by the IDF to be attacked by 100 armed settlers. When I sent the embassy the video and asked for protection for me and everyone else in Turmus’ayya, they literally said no,” Nathaniel added. His full video report also shows settlers lighting cars on fire.
Jewish settlers also carried out attacks against olive harvesters in the nearby town of Taybeh, the last remaining West Bank village with an entirely Christian population. Sources told the Palestinian news agency WAFA that Israeli settlers severely beat at least one farmer in Taybeh.
