The Washington Post photojournalist, who was attacked and seriously injured by Israeli settlers in the West Bank on Friday, described how she was saved with the help of local Palestinians.
Heidi Levine suffered four fractured vertebrae, two broken ribs and four puncture wounds when she was thrown to the ground and repeatedly beaten by a crowd of masked settlers while she and other journalists covered the olive harvest in the Palestinian village of Abu Falah, north of Ramallah.
It is unclear whether the puncture wounds were caused by knives or other weapons. Levine said a witness to his attack saw nails sticking out of some of the wooden clubs wielded by his attackers.
Levine, 64, has covered several wars and had just returned from an assignment in Ukraine before Friday’s attack. She said she most likely would have been killed if she had not been wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet.
“I probably would have been dead, because it certainly doesn’t take much to kill a person with blows to the head,” she said shortly before leaving the hospital in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva on Wednesday.
Levine stressed that Palestinians received no such protection and that more than 20 people had been killed in settler attacks so far this year, during a growing campaign of aggression – branded terrorism by Israeli security leaders – across the West Bank, aimed at driving Palestinians from their lands.
“All the journalists who watched (the attack on me) think that they and I have attended many funerals of Palestinians killed by settlers,” Levine said.
She said the olive harvest in Abu Falah began peacefully, but at one point a group of masked young settlers appeared on a nearby hillside, observing the group of Palestinian villagers, journalists and human rights activists who accompanied them. Levine said the attack began only after the Israeli army arrived on the scene.
“Then all hell broke loose. Some farmers started gathering their tarpaulins and their bags of olives that they had picked,” she said. “Then all of a sudden I heard a machine gun, then I saw tear gas in the distance. I started running… It was like a big commotion and then all of a sudden I saw a dozen of them and they started charging at me.
“I managed to keep my face on the ground, and I don’t know if I took that position to protect myself face down or if it was their first hit. Otherwise my whole face would have been smashed and I could have suffered brain damage or lost an eye.
“They started kicking me and beating me with sticks. I can’t even count how many times, probably over a hundred times. I actually tried to play dead so they would stop. But it didn’t work.”
Witnesses said the beating only stopped when Palestinian youths used slingshots to throw rocks at the settlers, forcing them to retreat, allowing another American journalist, Jasper Nathaniel, to reach Levine and, along with other journalists, help him to safety.
“THE shabab (The Palestinian youth) stood in front and tried to keep them (the settlers) away, to keep a protective shield, which was incredible. It was like a biblical battle,” Levine said.
After the attack, Nathaniel wrote: “If the shabab If she didn’t step in to protect her, she might well be dead. It is no exaggeration to say that young Palestinians armed only with stones risked their lives to save that of Heidi Levine.”
He said the army pursued the Palestinian youths after the incident, rather than the settlers. Palestinians risk being shot by settlers or soldiers if they try to resist attacks, and can be detained for long periods without charge.
Levine, who has lived in Israel for four decades, said she would return to reporting from the West Bank as soon as it recovered. “My work is important,” she said. “They bruised me, broke a few bones, but they didn’t break my spirit.”
Since the attack, she has received letters from Israelis expressing regret, as well as an apologetic phone call from President Isaac Herzog.
“It was a teddy bear on the phone,” she said. “He kept saying I just wanted to give you a big hug and these are not representative of what this country is, they are a dark stain, and he called them thugs.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, issued a statement on X seeking to cast doubt on eyewitness accounts and video testimony of what it called an “alleged attack.”
Levine was particularly angered by Netanyahu’s assertion that some video footage “appears to show Levine being knocked down and immediately helped to his feet by the same unidentified individual.”
“It’s really bullshit. They helped me up because they couldn’t take my stuff off me. That’s why,” Levine said. “They stole everything I had: a bag with my documents, my US passport, a credit card, a camera disk and a small camera bag with two other lenses. Everything was gone… That’s why (they stood me up), then they threw me on the ground and continued to kick and hit me.”
The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called the attack a “despicable act of terrorism” and demanded prosecution. Israeli police arrested 10 suspects after the Abu Falah incident and another attack on Saturday targeting European diplomats near the West Bank village of Taybeh.
On Wednesday, an Israeli court released four suspects in the Levine attack and placed them under house arrest, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence to keep them in detention.
When asked if she expected her attackers to be brought to justice, Levine said her confidence level was “two out of 10.”
“I don’t have much hope,” she said. “Of course, if the government made the decision to do something, to crack down on this and have people arrested, they would do it. But it’s not just about arresting these teenage thugs. It’s going after their leaders, the rabbis, and the way they’re organized.”
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