US ambassador urges Israel to prosecute attackers of American journalist

Trump-appointed Ambassador Mike Huckabee calls onslaught successful occupied West Bank a ‘despicable enactment of terror’.

United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has demanded Israel prosecute and jailhouse those liable for the onslaught connected Washington Post writer Heidi Levine successful the occupied West Bank.

“Attacking a pistillate lensman is simply a despicable enactment of panic carried retired by masked cowards,” Huckabee wrote connected X connected Saturday.

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“Those who attacked unarmed newsman should walk YRS successful prison,” helium added. “We person called for a afloat investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest grade of the instrumentality to whoever participated successful this.”

Levine was covering Palestinians’ yearly harvest of olives connected Friday successful the occupied West Bank erstwhile Israeli settlers brutally attacked her and respective Palestinians.

Israeli settlers stormed the area, bushed her and stole her passport, telephone, wallet and equipment, according to witnesses.

The perpetrators, equipped with bottles and slingshots, “were kicking maine for similar 10 minutes, and I was trying to clasp onto my cameras and my bag”, Levine said.

Jasper Nathaniel, an autarkic writer who witnessed the attack, told Al Jazeera that Levine “was successful very, precise atrocious shape. She couldn’t truly get up disconnected the ground.”

American freelance photojournalist Heidi Levine lies connected a gurney successful the exigency country of the authorities infirmary successful Ramallah, a metropolis successful the Israeli-occupied West Bank, connected October 16, 2026 [AFP]

Levine, 64, was taken to infirmary aft the battle successful Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah.

The American photojournalist underwent country connected her finger, which was astir detached from her hand, and was near with a breached rib and aggregate breached vertebrae, arsenic good arsenic lacerations, her girl told The Associated Press quality agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to enactment up his pro-settlement right-wing basal up of intimately fought October 27 elections, claimed connected Friday that Palestinians oregon “far-left” activists whitethorn person been liable for the attack connected Levine and different Palestinians.

Huckabee, a staunch state of Israel who has sharply criticised Israeli settler attacks against Americans, did not place the culprits arsenic settlers aft Netanyahu tried to sow uncertainty arsenic to their identity.

The ambassador, appointed by US President Donald Trump, met Palestinian-Americans successful the occupied West Bank municipality of Turmus Aya successful September to perceive locals’ grounds astir their experiences with pogroms. In August, Huckabee called a days-long Israeli settler siege an “act of terror”.

The US State Department criticised Friday’s onslaught utilizing a cautious code connected Levine’s beating, stating condemnation of “criminal unit by immoderate party”.