Masked settlers beat a Washington Post photographer and Palestinian olive harvesters in the West Bank, and Israeli police promise an investigation

She identified herself as an American journalist. The beating continued anyway, on her account, for about ten minutes.

Heidi Levine, a freelance photographer working for the Washington Post, was covering Palestinians harvesting olives near Abu Falah, north of Ramallah, on Friday when, she told the Committee to Protect Journalists from her hospital bed, a gang of masked settlers came down the hill, at least 50 men by her estimate, with slingshots. She was pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly, needed stitches in her hand and her back, and had her bag, camera and phone taken. Video filmed at the hospital and posted online shows her describing the attack in her own words. She was wearing a protective vest marked press. The Post said settlers also set Palestinian olive groves on fire and hurled stones during the attack on the harvesters, several of whom were injured. An Associated Press photograph from the scene shows Israeli soldiers moving toward a wounded Palestinian man on a road after troops shot him following the attack.

The Post's executive editor, Matt Murray, said the paper is relieved Levine received care and is safe, is outraged by an unwarranted attack on a journalist doing her job, and wants a thorough investigation. The CPJ said it is alarmed, and noted the attack follows a wave of similar incidents against Palestinian and foreign journalists covering the olive harvest, including the beating of an AFP photographer on October 6 that witnesses said soldiers watched without intervening. Levine said she did not personally see soldiers at the scene of her attack, though she saw tear gas and stun grenades fired.

Israeli police issued a statement acknowledging reports that a foreign journalist was injured and saying the incident would be investigated and those involved brought to justice. That promise is now the test. Olive harvest season in the West Bank brings the same collision every year, Palestinian farmers going to groves near settlements and settler groups determined to keep them off the land, and journalists go because the collision is predictable. This year one of the journalists was an American working for a major American paper, beaten on camera's edge in a marked vest, and the outcome of the police investigation will be reported here when there is one.