Assault on Journalists Shows How Israeli Military Acts 'In Service of The Settler Movement': CNN Reporter

Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces on Friday were caught on camera assaulting and detaining a crew of CNN journalists while they were reporting from the occupied West Bank.

A video of the incident posted on social media by CNN Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond shows the CNN crew walking near the Palestinian village of Tayasir, which in recent days has come under assault from Israeli settlers who established an illegal outpost in the area.

The crew are then accosted by armed members of the IDF, who order them to sit down. After the crew complies with their commands, the soldiers come to seize the journalists' cameras and phones that are being used to record the incident.

A soldier then puts CNN photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold and forces him to the ground. Writing about the assault later, Theophilos said that the soldier "pushed and strangled me," adding that this kind of violence "is just a symptom of the IDF's actions in the West Bank."

According to Diamond, the CNN crew were subsequently detained for two hours. During that time, Diamond wrote, it became clear that the ideology of the Israeli settlers movement was "motivating many of the soldiers who operate in the occupied West Bank" and that the Israeli military regularly acts "in service of the settler movement."

For instance, one IDF soldier acknowledged during conversations with the CNN crew that the settler outpost near Tayasir was unlawful under both international and Israeli law, but insisted "this will be a legal settlement... slowly, slowly."

The soldier also said he wanted to exact "revenge" on local Palestinians for the death of 18-year-old Israeli settler Yehuda Sherman, who was killed last week by a Palestinian driver. Palestinians who witnessed Sherman's killing have said that the driver was trying to stop Sherman from stealing sheep.

The IDF issued an apology to CNN over the incident, insisting that "the actions and behavior of the soldiers in the incident are incompatible with what is expected of IDF soldiers."

However, this apology was deemed insufficient by Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios.

"Apologies are not enough," he wrote on social media. "There is a need for clear accountability. 99.9% of the time there is zero accountability."

The soldiers' actions also drew condemnation from Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg, who argued that problems in the IDF have only grown worse under the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Messiah complexes, talk of revenge, and the use of force against journalists are just symptoms of what's been happening to the army over the past three years," Peleg said. "The chief of staff and the commanding general can write another thousand letters and wave flags all they want, but the process already seems irreversible."

Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan argued that incidents like the one captured by CNN are all too common for the IDF.

"The Israeli army arrests and assaults journalists, while settlers who commit horrific crimes against Palestinian civilians enjoy total impunity," he wrote. "This is state-backed terrorism."