Israeli settlers beat press photographer as soldiers watch in West Bank- Jaafar Ashtiyeh was covering violence against olive farmers when settlers set upon him with the butts of their rifles

West Bank  in The Guardian

William Christou in Jerusalem and agencies

Tue 6 Oct 2026

Armed Israeli settlers beat a photographer in the presence of Israeli soldiers, hospitalising him, as he covered worsening settler violence against olive farmers in the occupied West Bank.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse in Palestine, was assaulted by a group of settlers, who beat him with the butts of their rifles, despite him being marked as press. He was assaulted in view of about a dozen armed Israeli soldiers.

Ashtiyeh suffered bruises to his head and torso and was taken to hospital, according to witnesses, his family and fellow journalists.

His assault came amid a worsening wave of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. Every year, settlers attack Palestinian farmers trying to harvest their olives – an economic lifeline for the beleaguered Palestinian economy – with few legal consequences.

This harvest season has been particularly violent as the Israeli elections approach at the end of the month.

Ashtiyeh and another AFP photographer, John Wessels, were near the northern village of Aqraba when they noticed an Israeli soldier detaining a man as local Palestinians picked olives.

A quad bike suddenly raced towards the AFP journalists on top of a hill and a man on it opened live fire, with one Palestinian dropping to the ground. He was also hospitalised, with a gunshot to the foot, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

At least six other people then rushed towards the AFP journalists firing guns. As Ashtiyeh attempted to enter a car, which was clearly marked “Press”, two men jumped on him and beat him repeatedly with the butts of their rifles.

A group of at least a dozen Israeli soldiers were about 500 metres away at the time of the attack, according to Wessels.

“I could hear his screams,” said Wessels, who was also threatened at gunpoint. The assailants also took Ashtiyeh’s camera equipment.

Ashtiyeh, who is Palestinian, was conscious in a hospital in Nablus. He underwent X-rays which did not detect broken bones but he will remain in hospital for round-the-clock observation, his son, Zain Jaafar, said.

The man who initially fired the gun was wearing a long white shirt as well as military fatigue trousers and boots, which are commonly worn by soldiers, Wessels said.

AFP has asked the Israeli military for comment. Settlers are rarely arrested or charged for their attacks against Palestinians... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/06/israeli-settlers-beat-press-photographer-as-soldiers-watch-in-west-bank

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Just a gentle reminder from Dr. Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine: "In Gaza, Israel continues to shell Palestinians, killing up to a dozen daily, while Palestinian civil defence employees continue to dig up hundreds of remains of the ten thousand that Israel massacred in their own homes & neighborhoods. In the West Bank, Israeli settler thugs continue their daily raids & pogroms armed, funded & aided by the Israeli government & army. They uproot hundreds of thousands of mainly olive trees & steal the olives that Palestinian farmers picked. In the meantime, the Israeli government brazenly announces the stealing of more land & the building of more settlements while re-engineering the demographic reality & courses of movement in the West Bank to facilitate its fragmentation & annexation"

 Hanan Ashrawi  [Just Hanan. #FreePalestine]

@DrHananAshrawi

 

In Gaza, Israel continues to shell Palestinians, killing up to a dozen daily, while Palestinian civil defence employees continue to dig up hundreds of remains of the ten thousand that Israel massacred in their own homes & neighborhoods. 

 

In the West Bank, Israeli settler thugs continue their daily raids & pogroms armed, funded & aided by the Israeli government & army. They uproot hundreds of thousands of mainly olive trees & steal the olives that Palestinian farmers picked. 

 

In the meantime, the Israeli government brazenly announces the stealing of more land & the building of more settlements while re-engineering the demographic reality & courses of movement in the West Bank to facilitate its fragmentation & annexation. Just a gentle reminder.

 

https://x.com/DrHananAshrawi/status/2105954028135776443 

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Breaking the Silence: " The IDF delegated target identification to an AI system, a deeply problematic step in itself. This enabled the military to carry out strikes at an unprecedented pace. Combined with the IDF’s extremely permissive collateral damage policy, this sent the death toll in Gaza skyrocketing. "

Breaking the Silence

@BtSIsrael

 

The IDF's AI-generated assassination list. Now that everyone is talking about NAZA, the Hebrew acronym for “collateral damage,” let’s talk about how the IDF identified some of the targets for these strikes. 

 

This soldier gave us testimony about some of the crucial policies behind the astronomical death toll in Gaza. 

 

 The IDF delegated target identification to an AI system, a deeply problematic step in itself. This enabled the military to carry out strikes at an unprecedented pace. Combined with the IDF’s extremely permissive collateral damage policy, this sent the death toll in Gaza skyrocketing. 

 

The IDF allowed up to 20 civilians to be killed as collateral damage for every low-ranking Hamas operative targeted, whether a militant or a truck driver. This threshold could be raised dramatically when a senior Hamas member was the target.  

 

Testimony: “We worked with an artificial intelligence system, ‘Lavendar.’ They developed technological capabilities to establish that they (Hamas operatives) exist and they’re present there, and they expanded it (the identification of wanted people) to include anyone that you could somehow say belonged to Hamas.”  

 

Interviewer: What does belong to Hamas mean? "AI-[generated] things plus a few verifications that it’s actually the person [in question]."  “You’re genuinely targeting someone from the military wing, [but] how significant is he really? There’s a question mark over that. Let’s say, even if he is a fighter, would you now take down twenty people for a fighter? [...] [If] the person isn’t in a combat position, or say, a fighter is now fleeing to the south of the [Gaza] Strip, do I really need to go and kill him?” 

 

 Allowing such a high death toll in advance proved to be devastatingly destructive, and it is also deeply dehumanising. Palestinian lives are cheapened to the point where the killing of over a dozen people can be routinely sanitised under the label of “collateral damage.”

 https://x.com/BtSIsrael/status/2103103416062886316/photo/1

Find more testimonies from soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories on our website. Since 2004, we have collected, verified, and published thousands of testimonies.

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https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/199893 

breakingthesilence.org.il

Breaking the Silence › Testimony › The enemy is finite

 

A year after Israeli strikes killed journalists at a hospital, no one has been held accountable

 

West Bank siege exposes Israel army inaction on settler violence

 

'Lords of the Land': Israeli Soldiers Describe How Settlers Manage Military Reality in the West Bank

 

I Joined Rep. Ro Khanna on His West Bank Visit. Here's What I Saw

The collaboration between the Israeli army and the most extreme and violent settlers is not a new phenomenon – we at Breaking the Silence have been documenting it for years. It's an omnipresent characteristic of the occupation. Anyone who has served in the occupied territories knows that settlers are an integral part of the mechanism of control over Palestinians. 

Settler-only IDF units functioning as ‘vigilante militias’ in West Bank

The hagmar system had led to “the establishment of what are effectively settler militias within the IDF’s own ranks”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, an advocacy group for former Israeli soldiers. “These soldier-settlers are driven by a violent, zero-sum ideology, and have all the authority of regular IDF soldiers to put that ideology into action.”

 

‘To call it a ceasefire is a joke': Israeli soldiers share rare accounts from Gaza with AP

Israel’s military has said most of the people killed crossing the line posed a threat to troops. But soldiers who spoke to AP and Breaking the Silence — the whistleblower group that has collected troops’ testimonies throughout the war — say that at times soldiers were too far away, acting too quickly and under too much pressure to tell.

Israel's 'retrospective incrimination: First we shoot, we kill & then find a reason why it happened

Jordan's king tells The United Nations that Israel's 'expansionist appetite' is a regional threat.... “This sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels,” he continued, warning that “no one in this assembly should assume [Israel's] ambitions stop at Palestine.”

Jordan's King Abdullah II speaks during the 81st session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, on 22 September 2026 (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP)

22 September 2026 

Jordan's King Abdullah II told the United Nations on Tuesday that Israel's "expansionist appetite" poses a threat to the Middle East, pointing to its actions in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and southern Syria.

"This Israeli government's expansionist appetite is now a regional threat," he said in remarks to the General Assembly in New York, adding: "step by calculated step, Israel is testing how far it can go".

He said that, while Israel's actions have caused some international response, “resolutions end where they began: on paper,” calling this a wilful “choice” with the result being a “state without restraint”.

“This sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels,” he continued, warning that “no one in this assembly should assume [Israel's] ambitions stop at Palestine.”

  https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/jordans-king-tells-un-israels-expansionist-appetite-regional-threat

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"Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Gaza was not that the world allowed it to happen. It was discovering that Gaza was only the beginning...."

Doctor, sometimes a writer. Revealing hidden stories, a voice for the unheard. Witness to humanity's darkest depths. Palestine https://hope-heal.org/  

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https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/2096672691130703996 

Dr. Ezzideen

@ezzingaza

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Gaza was not that the world allowed it to happen. It was discovering that Gaza was only the beginning.

 

All the speeches, protests, resolutions, international laws, red lines, condemnations, and promises of “never again” have apparently taught this monster nothing.

 

This morning, Israeli strikes completely destroyed Ghandour Hospital in southern Lebanon.

 

Another hospital !! Another building once meant for healing reduced to rubble.

 

We watched hospitals in Gaza bombed, besieged, evacuated, burned and destroyed. We were told Gaza was exceptional. We were told the world was watching. International institutions issued statements. Governments expressed “concern.”

People marched through capitals demanding that there must be a line even war is not allowed to cross.

 

And now we are watching those lines disappear somewhere else.

 

Again.

We are living through a dark age in which military power and money seem capable of crushing almost everything humanity spent generations pretending was sacred: international law, hospitals, homes, places of worship, trees, memory, and human life itself.

 

And perhaps that is what terrifies me most.

 

Not only that these things are being destroyed, but that the world is being trained to watch their destruction and continue with its day.

 

A hospital becomes rubble. A neighborhood disappears. A family becomes photographs. Another condemnation is written.

 

And elsewhere, people wake up, drink their coffee, go to work, come home, and sleep.

 

I once believed that knowing what happened would be enough to make humanity afraid of repeating it.

 

Now I understand the more terrible possibility:

Human beings can know.

They can remember.

They can build museums to the dead, teach their names in schools, write “never again” above their graves; and still allow another human being to become rubble.

 

It happened.

Therefore it could happen again.

 

Perhaps the mistake was believing that “again” would look exactly like the first time.

 

If hell is a place where power can destroy human beings, homes, hospitals, memory, and life itself, while those who built laws to prevent it discover that their laws cannot make it stop, then perhaps hell does not require another world.

 

Perhaps it requires only this one,

and enough people willing to continue their day.

 

#SurvivalTestimony