A team from NBC News was attacked by masked Israeli settlers as they were interviewing a Palestinian woman
over the weekend, sparking outrage and sharp criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The team was interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah, a 51-year-old Palestinian resident, and her family in the town of Jalud, near Nablus in the West Bank. She spoke of how she and her family had been previously attacked by other Israeli settlers.
As she was on camera, a grey car with Israeli license plates was spotted driving in reverse up the hill toward them. One masked assailant was leaning out of the rear window, holding a stick.
As the car stopped, four more masked men jumped out, dressed in dark clothes, beating Abdullah and the NBC News crew with sticks while throwing stones. “They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car,” NBC News correspondent Matt Bradley said.
Bradley was hit twice in the arm, while cameraman Khaldoon Eid and producer Lahawez Jabari were also injured. “Suddenly a car came to us,” Jabari said after receiving medical care. “The settlers had sticks. I saw a gun, but they didn’t use the gun.”
Abdullah was left beaten on the ground. She would be treated by the Red Crescent medical organization and was reported to be recovering later that Saturday evening, according to her husband Mahmoud Tubas.
The attack was one of several that took place in the West Bank, including in the town of Qusra. Israeli settlers have increasingly waged violent attacks against Palestinians since the beginning of the year in the West Bank, which has been home to 3 million Palestinians and 500,000 Israeli settlers.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 76 Palestinians have been killed
in attacks in the West Bank based on reporting up to July 24. Three Israelis have been killed in the same time period.
Netanyahu said in a statement that the attacks “cause enormous injustice to the law-abiding settler public, hinder the IDF in fulfilling its missions and harm Israel’s standing in the world.”
He also called for security forces to “apprehend the perpetrators and to bring them to justice,” and that the nation of Israel “will not tolerate vigilantism of any kind by anyone.”