An American journalist and an activist who reportedly suffered a concussion from being beaten by armed Israeli settlers remained in detention Wednesday night, hours after Israeli police arrested them following the attack.
Adele Shoko, a Russian activist, reported that settlers had attacked her, Israeli-Russian activist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, and US journalist Jasper Nathaniel late Wednesday in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank.
“They beat us, threatened to shoot us, stole Andrey’s phone and my glasses, and pepper-sprayed Jasper,” Shoko said on the social media platform X.
According to Shoko, Khrzhanovskiy was denied medical treatment after losing consciousness “several times in front of police.” He and Nathaniel were taken to a police station, where they remained hours later.
Nathaniel was heard yelling, “I just got beat up!” while being led away by police.
“Andrey was severely beaten and lost consciousness several times in front of police,” said Shoko. “Despite this, he was denied hospital treatment. He was put in an ambulance—but instead of being taken to hospital, he was taken to a police station. He is still there, arrested and being denied medical care.”
One video appeared to show Khrzhanovskiy losing consciousness.
Drop Site News cited Shoko as she reported that Nathaniel and Khrzhanovskiy eventually were able to speak with a lawyer, but remained at a police station. They were reportedly “physically okay.”
“Israeli state terrorism knows no boundaries,” said historian Zachary Foster of the footage of the attack.
The assault came less than two weeks after both Nathaniel and Khrzhanovskiy came to the aid of Heidi Levine, a Washington Post journalist, after she was brutally beaten and robbed by Israeli settlers while she was covering an attack by dozens of masked men on Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank.
State-backed settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have ramped up significantly since October 2023, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also began a military campaign against Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in what leading human rights groups have called a genocide, and a United Nations commission said this week that at least 1,080 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in the last three years.
Top officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have pushed to further annex the West Bank as the IDF has backed settler raids on villages and attacks on Palestinian communities as well as recent assaults on journalists, US lawmakers, and a group of European diplomats.
Nathaniel, who has spent years covering the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for outlets including Drop Site and Zeteo News, spoke recently to The New Yorker about the attack on Levine, emphasizing that Palestinians had thrown stones at her attackers to allow her colleagues to reach her.
“The IDF soldiers who have been there, who’ve been tear-gassing the Palestinians and providing cover for the settlers, stormed the village,” Nathaniel said of the assault on Levine. “Rather than go after the settlers who have just nearly killed a woman, they stormed the village and started firing their weapons, and they shot a Palestinian man in the leg.”
On Substack this week, Khrzhanovskiy wrote that “all the Palestinian villages in the West Bank are under siege,” and that Netanyahu’s government aimed to use a recent strike against Israeli soldiers “to start a war in the West Bank.”
“The only way to stop this is pressure from all directions. We know it works,” said Khrzhanovskiy. “Call your representative, hold a demonstration, organize direct action against the occupation’s assets abroad. Keep attention on the West Bank.”
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