Israeli Settlers Step Up Attacks on West Bank Journalists

The latest example came Saturday in the Palestinian village of Jalud near Nablus, where masked Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian woman and three members of an NBC News team who were reporting on her family’s displacement.

The journalists were interviewing Aida Ahmed Abdullah, 51, when a vehicle with Israeli license plates approached the group and at least four masked men emerged and attacked them with sticks and rocks, according to reports.

NBC News correspondent Matt Bradley was struck in the arm, while a cameraman and producer were also injured and received medical treatment.

The attack was not an isolated incident.

Five journalists were injured on Nov. 8, 2025, when Israeli settlers, some masked and carrying sticks and sharp tools, attacked reporters covering Palestinian farmers and international volunteers harvesting olives in the northern West Bank village of Beita, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

More recently, Israeli settlers attacked Agence France-Presse journalists reporting on tensions with Palestinians in the West Bank, with the violence leaving at least five people injured, according to the reporters and medics.

The repeated assaults have placed journalists covering Israeli settler violence in an increasingly dangerous position, particularly when they document attacks against Palestinian communities.

Meanwhile, attacks on Palestinians and their property by Israeli settlers have also intensified across the occupied West Bank.

Human Rights Watch said attacks by settlers are increasingly driving the forced displacement of Palestinian communities, with dozens of communities at risk of being erased.

The attacks have also raised broader concerns over the ability of journalists to document developments in the occupied territory and provide independent accounts of violence against Palestinians.

For journalists working in the occupied West Bank, the latest assault forms part of a wider pattern in which reporting on Israeli settler violence itself has increasingly exposed them to attack.