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US Journalist and Activist Detained After Israeli Settler Attack in West Bank
Jasper Nathaniel and Andrey Khrzhanovskiy recently came to the aid of Washington Post reporter Heidi Levine after she was beaten by Israeli settlers, and spoke out about the attack.
Oct 29, 2026
An American journalist and an activist who reportedly suffered a concussion from being beaten by armed Israeli settlers remained in detention Wednesday night, hours after Israeli police arrested them following the attack.
Adele Shoko, a Russian activist, reported that settlers had attacked her, Israeli-Russian activist Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, and US journalist Jasper Nathaniel late Wednesday in the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair, in the Masafer Yatta area of the occupied West Bank.
"They beat us, threatened to shoot us, stole Andrey's phone and my glasses, and pepper-sprayed Jasper," Shoko said on the social media platform X.
According to Shoko, Khrzhanovskiy was denied medical treatment after losing consciousness "several times in front of police." He and Nathaniel were taken to a police station, where they remained hours later.
Nathaniel was heard yelling, "I just got beat up!" while being led away by police.
"Andrey was severely beaten and lost consciousness several times in front of police," said Shoko. "Despite this, he was denied hospital treatment. He was put in an ambulance—but instead of being taken to hospital, he was taken to a police station. He is still there, arrested and being denied medical care."
One video appeared to show Khrzhanovskiy losing consciousness.
Drop Site News cited Shoko as she reported that Nathaniel and Khrzhanovskiy eventually were able to speak with a lawyer, but remained at a police station. They were reportedly "physically okay."
"Israeli state terrorism knows no boundaries," said historian Zachary Foster of the footage of the attack.
The assault came less than two weeks after both Nathaniel and Khrzhanovskiy came to the aid of Heidi Levine, a Washington Post journalist, after she was brutally beaten and robbed by Israeli settlers while she was covering an attack by dozens of masked men on Palestinian olive groves in the West Bank.
State-backed settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have ramped up significantly since October 2023, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also began a military campaign against Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in what leading human rights groups have called a genocide, and a United Nations commission said this week that at least 1,080 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in the last three years.
Top officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government have pushed to further annex the West Bank as the IDF has backed settler raids on villages and attacks on Palestinian communities as well as recent assaults on journalists, US lawmakers, and a group of European diplomats.
Nathaniel, who has spent years covering the Israeli occupation of the West Bank for outlets including Drop Site and Zeteo News, spoke recently to The New Yorker about the attack on Levine, emphasizing that Palestinians had thrown stones at her attackers to allow her colleagues to reach her.
"The IDF soldiers who have been there, who’ve been tear-gassing the Palestinians and providing cover for the settlers, stormed the village," Nathaniel said of the assault on Levine. "Rather than go after the settlers who have just nearly killed a woman, they stormed the village and started firing their weapons, and they shot a Palestinian man in the leg."
On Substack this week, Khrzhanovskiy wrote that "all the Palestinian villages in the West Bank are under siege," and that Netanyahu's government aimed to use a recent strike against Israeli soldiers "to start a war in the West Bank."
"The only way to stop this is pressure from all directions. We know it works," said Khrzhanovskiy. "Call your representative, hold a demonstration, organize direct action against the occupation’s assets abroad. Keep attention on the West Bank."
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Israeli Occupation Forces Ramp Up Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank After Palestinian Resistance Attack
"What we saw today was an attempt to copy the illegal practices used in Gaza, in the heart of the West Bank,” said one Israeli lawyer. “They want to wipe out entire areas exactly as they did in Gaza."
Oct 23, 2026
Israeli forces on Friday began demolishing homes and businesses and forcibly evacuating residents near Hebron in the illegally occupied West Bank following a Palestinian resistance attack that killed two Israeli soldiers.
"First, we will destroy this place and completely transform it, but we will do something that has never been done before," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the scene of the shooting attack that took place earlier Friday near Hebron Junction. "We will evacuate the residents, go from house to house, remove weapons from there as well, and deal with and destroy all terrorist infrastructure."
"We will consider expanding this model to other cities as well," Netanyahu added.
The prime minister also ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to “immediately impose a lockdown on Hebron and prepare for a full lockdown" of the entire West Bank, while vowing to launch the largest military operation in the occupied territory since it was conquered during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently ethnically cleansed of more than 100,000 Palestinians.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also vowed that neighborhoods associated with the attackers would be "evacuated"—a word that critics call a euphemism for ethnic cleansing—"just like in Gaza; just like in Lebanon."
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich echoed those calls.
"There is no other option but a comprehensive military campaign in Judea and Samaria to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, collect weapons, and eliminate terrorists," he said, referring to Israel's name for the West Bank.
"Exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon," Smotrich added.
Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 people in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, while forcibly displacing around 1.9 million residents and destroying or damaging more than 80% of the strip's structures. In Lebanon, nearly 40,000 people have been killed or injured by Israeli attacks over the same period, during which there were two waves of mass displacement in which more than a million people were forced from their homes each time. Dozens of Lebanese villages have been flattened.
Demolition and displacement were the order of the day in the West Bank Friday as Israeli bulldozers began demolishing homes after Netanyahu's announcement, even as local residents said their properties had no connection to the attack on the slain IDF troops.
The Times of Israel reported that soldiers ordered Palestinians in the Farsh al-Hawa area to evacuate ahead of demolitions, with footage showing residents being pushed out as their belongings were loaded onto trucks.
“We are already here with the equipment on the ground, sending an unequivocal message to our enemies: If you mess with us, we will exact a very, very painful price from you,” Smotrich said in Farsh al-Hawa.
Israel’s High Court intervened and issued a temporary order to halt demolitions after Arab-Israeli human rights lawyer Mohammed Dahleh filed an urgent petition on behalf of two factory owners who claimed the destruction violated Israeli law as well as international prohibitions on collective punishment.
“What we saw today was an attempt to copy the illegal practices used in Gaza, in the heart of the West Bank,” Dahleh told The Guardian. “They want to wipe out entire areas exactly as they did in Gaza and the refugee camps in the West Bank.”
Another Israeli human rights attorney, Michael Sfard, called Smotrich's video announcement a "direct admission" of collective punishment.
The demolitions and forced evacuations are unfolding amid a wider Israeli campaign of home destruction, settler pogroms and other deadly violence, and displacement that Palestinian rights advocates and United Nations officials have called ethnic cleansing.
Palestinian olive harvesters, as well as international solidarity activists accompanying them, journalists covering settler attacks, and even international diplomats have come under attack by IDF-backed settler terrorists. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said earlier this week that between September 1 and October 12, Israeli settlers carried out 199 attacks connected to the harvest, killing one Palestinian, injuring 124, and damaging more than 2,500 trees and saplings.
According to OCHA, over 1,130 Palestinians—at least 250 of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since October 2023.
Friday's developments came four days ahead of Israel's elections, in which the ruling far-right coalition is trying to boost support among voters, including settler colonists pushing the government to annex the West Bank.
Netanyahu has vowed to annex all settler colonies. Smotrich has presented a plan to annex approximately 82% of the West Bank, excluding six major Palestinian cities. Ben-Gvir wants to annex the entire West Bank.
Israel's actions on Friday drew widespread condemnation.
“Israeli leaders are publicly announcing plans for collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes,” the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said, while imploring “governments and international institutions to act now, using all means available under international law, to prevent the forcible displacement of Palestinian civilians, collective punishment, and extensive unlawful destruction in Hebron.”
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'Flat-Out Lying,' Israel Claims Palestinian Farmers, Brad Lander Entered Restricted Area Before Detention
Aside from the indignity of Israel forcing Palestinians to get permission to work their own land, the farmers and those with them—including a US congressional candidate—were not even in an area requiring coordination.
Oct 21, 2026
An official Israeli military map belies claims made Wednesday by Israel's government that Palestinian olive harvesters accompanied by activists and US congressional candidate Brad Lander had entered a restricted area of the illegally occupied West Bank prior to their detention earlier in the day.
Israeli occupation forces detained Lander and scores of other people—including Israeli leftists, members of Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jewish American activists—near the town of Nahalin as they accompanied Palestinians who sought to harvest the olives that provide economic and cultural sustenance to their families and communities.
Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York's 10th Congressional District, was released after roughly three hours with what he called a "warning." Many of the other detainees remained in custody, according to The Times of Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli Foreign Ministry initially said that harvesting in the area required prior coordination with the authorities. But a map distributed to Palestinian farmers by Israel's Civil Administration, the military's administrative arm in the occupied territory, showed that the location did not require coordination.
The discrepancy prompted questions about why the farmers and their supporters were detained at all—and condemnation of an illegal occupation and apartheid system that forces Palestinians to get permission to work their own land.
"The Israeli Foreign Ministry is lying. No coordination was required, and we were never told that it was," Lander said on X. "We were not in a restricted security area. We did not pass any checkpoints. Palestinian farmers do not—and should not—need permits to harvest their own olive fields. But they fear doing so, because the IDF doesn’t protect them from settler violence."
Responding to an Israeli Foreign Ministry social media post claiming "Brad Lander's latest stunt" was "not about harvesting olives," but rather "harvesting headlines," Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan retorted, "If you stopped Israeli settler terrorists from storming Palestinian villages and communities, murdering civilians, stealing olives, setting homes on fire, and seizing land, there would be no headlines to harvest."
Hassab said in a separate post: "The Israeli Foreign Ministry is flat-out lying about Lander and the other activists entering a restricted area. The IDF’s own map shows they were not in a restricted area."
Some observers responded with mockery, like Jerusalem attorney Daniel Seidemann, who quipped that the apprehended Palestinians were guilty of "aggravated harvesting in the first degree."
New York social worker David Grossman posted a photo of an SUV belonging to World Central Kitchen that was bombed by Israeli forces in Gaza in one of multiple Israeli massacres of workers and volunteers for the food charity during the ongoing genocide.
Israeli journalist Haim Goldich acknowledged on X that "there's a chance there's a big mess here and 80 people were detained for no reason."
Wednesday's events took place against a backdrop of a particularly violent olive harvest season. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Monday that between September 1 and October 12, Israeli settlers carried out 199 attacks connected to the harvest, killing one Palestinian, injuring 124, and damaging more than 2,500 trees and saplings.
OCHA documented more than 2,060 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian death, injury, or property damage across the occupied West Bank since the beginning of 2026—an average of seven attacks a day.
According to OCHA, at least 1,138 Palestinians—at least 250 of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since October 2023.
While Israeli leaders have sometimes condemned individual attacks—even while casting aspersions on victims like US photojournalist Heidi Levine—critics argue that the state's broader policies enable the violence. Settlements receive state infrastructure and protection, while Palestinians face restrictions on movement, land access, construction, and agricultural activity.
The result is a system in which Palestinians can face military detention for attempting to harvest their own trees, even as settlers attack Palestinian farmers and destroy their livelihood with impunity.
“The harvest orders tell the story of the government’s criminal policy: Settlers are illegally seizing more and more hilltops with government encouragement and support, while the military, for its part, closes off vast areas to Palestinians under the pretext of defending those illegal outposts," the Israeli group Peace Now said last week.
"This is a system of dispossession and plunder," the group continued, "and it is a disgrace to the State of Israel.”
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'Palestinians Face Far Worse Consequences Every Day,' Says Brad Lander After Release From IDF Custody
"These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes," said the US congressional candidate.
Oct 21, 2026
Democratic US congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday that he was released by Israeli forces with a "warning" after he and dozens of others were detained while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the illegally occupied West Bank.
"Several dozen rabbis and participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention," Lander, who is Jewish, wrote on social media. "They should all be released immediately. To be clear: Palestinians face far worse consequences every day. These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes."
Prior to his release, Lander posted a video from a bus that he said was "taking us away for processing" after settler security called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the group harvesting olives.
"Let's be clear: Occupation is a crime under international law," said Lander, who is running to represent New York's 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. "Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law."
I’ve been released from IDF custody with a “warning,” apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention.
[image or embed]
— Brad Lander (@bradlander.bsky.social) 9:34 AM · Oct 21, 2026
Lander was part of a group of around 80 American and Israeli rabbis and activists who were detained by the IDF on Wednesday as they helped Palestinians harvest olives from a grove near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Israeli lawyers told NPR that the incident marked "the largest mass detention of activists in the occupied West Bank in at least a decade."
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the US-based advocacy group J Street, said in response to the detentions that "when the government of Israel and its military and law enforcement are arresting rabbis and volunteers who have journeyed 6000 miles to protect Palestinian farmers harvesting olives and not the violent terrorists harassing and attacking the farmers—it tells you all you need to know about this government's moral compass."
"This illegal and immoral occupation must end," he added.
The mass detention came after several recent instances of horrific Israeli settler violence against Palestinian olive harvesters, European diplomats, and an American journalist.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement earlier this week that "Israel’s apartheid system is turning the olive harvest into a season of horror for Palestinian families across the occupied West Bank."
“States must recognize that settler attacks are not isolated acts, but a central policy of the Israeli state," said Morayef, calling on nations to "take concrete measures to respect their obligations under international law and to avoid complicity in Israeli violations and crimes against Palestinians by halting all trade, investment, and cooperation that contribute to maintaining the unlawful occupation, apartheid, and the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing."
"Hiding behind empty rhetoric is not only cowardly, it is enabling further abuses," she added. "For Palestinians, it continues to be deadly.”
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Israel Has Demolished Majority of Villages in Southern Lebanon—Mostly After the Ceasefire
Defense Minister Israel Katz has bragged that Israel was destroying "not one house at a time," but "the entirety of those villages."
Oct 12, 2026
When Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire in April, the Israel Defense Forces' systematic destruction of villages in southern Lebanon was supposed to halt. Instead, it was just getting started.
Israeli forces have largely leveled 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns in occupied southern Lebanon, a New York Times investigation published Monday revealed, fueling fears that Israel intends to permanently prevent displaced residents from returning.
Rather than collateral damage from military attacks, the razing of Lebanese villages since April has largely been carried out through controlled demolitions by Israeli forces.
Nearly all the villages destroyed have been majority Shia—the sect from which Hezbollah draws much of its support—while those containing Christian, Druze, and Sunni Muslims have largely been spared.
In July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz acknowledged that Israel had destroyed at least 24 historic Lebanese villages, describing it as punishment for their residents.
“Twenty-four Lebanese villages that were hundreds of years old—with Shiite residents who acted as enemies [of Israel] on behalf of Hezbollah and threatened our borders and our residents—we destroyed all of the buildings.”
“Not one house at a time," he emphasized. "The entirety of those villages—their demolition has been completed.”
Since March, Israel's military campaign has displaced at least 1.1 million Lebanese civilians, while its forces have entrenched themselves in an occupied swath of southern Lebanon extending as far as eight miles from the border.
Roughly 270,000 people remain barred from returning home. Many have no homes to return to. In many villages, homes, roads, utilities, and public facilities no longer function.
The Times found that Israeli forces have also burned about 16,500 acres of land—roughly 11% of the total occupied area—since the April ceasefire, including farmland and olive groves. Meanwhile, thousands of trees have been bulldozed.
As this life-sustaining infrastructure has come down, Israel has erected what appear to be the fixtures of a long-term military occupation: satellite imagery shows at least three new Israeli military outposts have been at least partially built since the ceasefire began, alongside new roads connecting them to Israeli territory.
The US-brokered ceasefire expressly prohibited "offensive military operations against Lebanese targets, including civilian, military, and other state targets, in the territory of Lebanon" except in cases where it was necessary to take defensive measures against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.
Israel's military told the Times it received no directive “to carry out widespread damage to structures or to demolish villages" in southern Lebanon. “The IDF operates in the security zone in southern Lebanon with the aim of removing threats posed by the Hezbollah terrorist organization to the residents of Israel and to IDF troops," it added.
Israeli officials have suggested that the occupation of southern Lebanon will continue indefinitely. Katz said last month that Israel "will not withdraw from the security zone" until Hezbollah disarms.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that some of the Christian villages would like to be annexed into Israeli territory. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, renewed his call last month for Israel to extend its borders north to the Litani River, which encompasses most of the Lebanese territory it currently occupies.
Israel has said it has razed entire villages to destroy Hezbollah military infrastructure and prevent fighters from returning to the area near the Israeli border.
Janina Dill, a professor of global security at the University of Oxford, has said using mass destruction to carry out this objective was "manifestly illegal" under international law, which says that destroying civilian property without an imperative military necessity can constitute a war crime.
"It’s deeply implausible that imperative military necessity applies to every house in a particular village," she told the Financial Times in August.
Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in July that Israel was engaging in the "wholesale destruction" of civilian homes, adding that "demolition of this type raises huge flags about compliance with international humanitarian law.”
"In large parts of southern Lebanon, Israel’s ‘everybody-leave’ orders were followed by ‘don’t-come-back’ orders," said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa in June. "Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of return of tens of thousands of civilians from southern Lebanon amounts to unlawful transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and thus a war crime."
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IDF Vets: Post-10/7 Rules Allowed Hundreds of Civilian Deaths to Kill Single Hamas Member
"You can't authorize the potential killing of 300 civilians... and still tell the public we did everything we could to avoid harming innocent people," said one veteran.
Oct 12, 2026
Former Israeli military and intelligence personnel affirmed that rules for targeting confirmed and alleged Hamas members in Gaza were dramatically loosened after the October 7, 2023 attack, allowing strikes expected to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians to target even low-ranking members of the Palestinian resistance group, according to a report published Monday.
In a paywalled article published by Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, Yaniv Kubovich gathered testimonies from former Israel Defense Forces intelligence personnel that add to the body of evidence from Israeli whistleblowers, military officials, and investigative journalists documenting how the IDF expanded its targeting practices during its devastating US-backed annihilation of Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians in the coastal exclave over the past three years.
One change described by some of those interviewed by Kubovich was "the opening of the intelligence apparatus to untrained personnel."
"People arrived at military intelligence who weren't from the unit, reservists who'd never even served in intelligence, brought in from all sorts of places," said one veteran, identified as "A."
"They sat in the Targeting Directorate looking for the most insignificant targets, the small fry, so they could kill them," A added. "Anyone displaying Hamas symbols on Facebook or identifying themselves as Hamas was marked as a target. Some were Hamas members, some were fighters too, but they really were small fry."
Another veteran, "D," who was assigned to a strike cell—units that coordinate drone and other aerial attacks—said: "Suddenly, the IDF was striking even the lowest of the low indiscriminately, and everyone had forgotten about conserving ammunition. We were striking Hamas drivers. That's how far it went."
Kubovich wrote that "a recurring theme in the accounts is the gap between a target's importance, the scale of the strike and the civilian toll deemed acceptable."
For example, on October 31, 2023, IDF warplanes dropped 2,000-pound "bunker-buster" bombs supplied by the United States on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza in order to kill one Hamas commander, Ibrahmi Biari.
"We knew Biari was underground, beneath several large buildings, but we couldn't pinpoint which building he was under," said D. "So they chose several buildings that were still occupied and decided to bring down all the buildings above the tunnel he was in. We didn't initiate an evacuation because it was important to kill him before he could get away."
A, who was also involved in the mission, said the decision to bomb the buildings was referred to the IDF chief of staff for approval, since intelligence officials estimated that there would be hundreds of civilian casualties. The IDF calculated that roughly 100 people would be killed or wounded in the proposed attack.
"We couldn't get any more intelligence to pinpoint his exact location," said veteran D. "They told us, 'He's killing soldiers right now. We have to strike him,' out of concern for the troops on the ground, and in the end the strike was approved. They really wanted to kill this guy."
Hamas said that 400 people were killed or wounded in the attack.
"Among other things, we relied on figures coming from Hamas, which we considered relatively plausible, even if they weren't 100% accurate," veteran A told Kubovich. "As time went on, we realized the death toll was around 250. I remember being stunned that we were bringing down several densely populated buildings, killing and injuring hundreds of people, to kill a battalion commander who, just a few weeks earlier, hadn't even been someone we were supposed to gather intelligence on."
The UK-based civilian casualty monitor Airwars said that at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, were killed in the attack, which wiped out whole families.
"You can't authorize the potential killing of 300 civilians for a battalion commander, or the killing of 20 civilians for every Hamas truck driver, and still tell the public we did everything we could to avoid harming innocent people," Nadav Weiman, executive director of the IDF veterans' group Breaking the Silence, told Kubovich.
Referring to the Jabalia massacre, D said: "I can't say this particular strike is what really messes with my head. What's much harder for me is the system of strike after strike after strike, with collateral damage running into dozens of people, sometimes hundreds. Being part of a system like that bothers me more than taking part in any particular strike."
The veterans' accounts raise further questions about Israel's repeated assertions that its military operations have been conducted in accordance with international humanitarian law, which requires parties in armed conflicts to distinguish between civilians and combatants and prohibits attacks expected to cause excessive civilian harm relative to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage.
Those claims stand in stark contrast with statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials, who began calling for the genocidal destruction of Gaza and its 2.2 million people in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant—his former defense minister who ordered the “complete siege” of Gaza, explaining that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly"—are currently fugitives from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they are wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague, is currently conducting a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by more than 15 nations. While a ruling in the case isn’t expected until at least 2029, a United Nations commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and other experts—including many Israeli and international Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others—have already concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The new Haaretz investigation adds to the body of reporting on Israel's loosened rules of engagement and their disastrous implications for Gaza civilians, including a December 2024 New York Times exposé involving interviews with over 100 IDF soldiers and veterans, Israeli officials, dozens of airstrike victims, and experts on the law and conduct of war.
Kubovich's revelations also come as the documentary NAZA, directed by Israeli journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, brings testimony from Israeli military and intelligence insiders to international audiences. The film features 24 anonymized insiders describing the surveillance, artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, and military procedures used during the assault on Gaza.
IDF veteran testimonies are consistent with earlier investigations into the IDF's use of artificial intelligence to generate targets at extraordinary speed, often with limited human scrutiny.
In April 2024, Abraham reported for +972 Magazine and Local Call that the military used an AI system called Lavender to identify suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. The investigation found that the IDF initially authorized officers to accept civilian casualty estimates of up to 15 or 20 people for each low-ranking alleged militant targeted, and more than 100 civilians for certain senior Hamas officials.
“The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option,” one intelligence officer told the outlets. “It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The investigation also found that officers were permitted to rely on Lavender's recommendations without thoroughly checking the underlying intelligence.
Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has also acknowledged the enormous human toll of the war.
“This is not a gentle war; we took the gloves off from the first minute,” Halevi said during a September 2025 speech to residents of Ein Habor, adding that “not once” has any legal authority “limited” his wartime conduct.
Implicitly confirming Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures—which then stood at around 220,000 Palestinians killed or wounded—Halevi said that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population of approximately 2.2 million had been "killed or injured” since October 2023.
In August 2025, Abraham and Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian's senior international affairs correspondent, revealed that classified IDF intelligence data suggested that 5 in 6 Palestinians, or 83% of people, killed by Israeli forces through the first 19 months of the war were civilians.
Current and former IDF troops have accused their own of deliberately shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, sometimes out of sheer boredom. Palestinian and international volunteer medical professionals have also described what they say is the deliberate shooting of Gazans, including children, more than 21,500 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets—with more victims added to that grim total with every passing day.
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Palestinian Researcher Dismantles Israel's List of So-Called 'Terrorist' Journalists Slain in Gaza
Researcher Muhammad Shehada reviewed all 170 names on the IDF's list of supposed militants posing as journalists and found it to be "the most sloppy shameless fraud possible."
Oct 04, 2026
Seeking to discredit reports of its unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces last week published a list of 170 slain Palestinians it claimed were not legitimate media workers but members of "terrorist groups."
Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, reviewed every single entry on the list. He called it "the most sloppy shameless fraud possible."
Israeli officials and Western supporters have trumpeted the IDF's list as a counter to findings by groups like International Federation of Journalists, which has described Israel's nearly three-year-old war in Gaza as “the deadliest period in the history of journalism" and cataloged at least 240 journalists and media workers killed.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found dozens of cases in which it concluded journalists were targeted deliberately because of their reporting and filed multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging war crimes against the press.
The database, which the IDF refers to as the "Press Files," says "that claim does not tell the full story" and states that "individuals presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organizations."
The IDF claims the list was the product of an “in-depth investigation” consisting of open-source information, documents recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza, interrogations of alleged Palestinian militants, and intelligence gathered during military operations.
But as Shehada explained in a thread posted to social media on Sunday, "In the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence. In most of them, their pages are literally blank."
In 59 cases, Shehada found that the IDF did not provide any evidence for its claim that a journalist was a member of Hamas or PIJ other than that the claim was "based on multiple intelligence sources."
Shehada said this amounted to essentially saying "trust me, bro," which is especially insufficient given the numerous instances in which the IDF has been found to have misled the public about its responsibility for certain attacks, like the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in 2024.
In another 42 cases, Shehada found, the IDF provided only decontextualized "snippets" of files, which were "undated and unspecified." Without more information, Shehada said, this is "not... evidence of anything."
"Those snippets could be taken from random files; they could be outdated or fabricated," Shehada said, pointing to previous cases in which purported Hamas intelligence circulated by Israeli sources was later revealed to be misleadingly presented as fabricated.
Shehada pointed to specific cases in which Israel's allegations against specific journalists have been undermined by the underlying evidence.
Israel claimed that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul, whom the IDF killed in July 2024, was an operative with Hamas' elite Nukhba wing and released a supposed Hamas personnel document as proof.
But as Reporters Without Borders has previously explained, the document says al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a military rank in 2007, when he was 10, while elsewhere saying he joined in 2014. It also identifies him as an engineer, contradicting the IDF’s description of him as a Nukhba fighter. Israeli troops also detained al-Ghoul at al-Shifa hospital months before he was killed but released him after 12 hours.
The case of Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera journalist killed in 2025, is similar. As Shehada documented for +972 magazine last year, al-Sharif was seriously injured in 2017, listed in a military context in 2019, but described as “suspended” and “unassigned” by 2023—while another document nevertheless portrays him as an elite Nukhba fighter. He was also reportedly detained and released by Israeli forces during the 2024 al-Shifa raid.
In other cases, the IDF's evidence outright debunks the military's own claims. For instance, Israel labeled photojournalist Hassan Aslih—killed by an airstrike at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in May 2025—as a "military operative." But the 2019 Hamas document provided as evidence for this lists him as a "photographer" involved with "media services."
While the document, if authentic, does establish a relationship between Aslih and Hamas' Qassam Brigades at least six years before his death, this does not make him a legitimate target under international humanitarian law, which distinguishes between those who have a “continuous combat function" and those who provide political or other indirect forms of support, like media coverage.
Shehada found at least seven cases in which the only evidence provided by the IDF was photos of slain journalists holding guns. In another 12 cases, the IDF provided undated photos of journalists allegedly taking part in Hamas or PIJ military activities.
Shehada noted that many prominent Israeli journalists also have past military service, such as Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, who was an IDF reservist until 2023. "Does that make him a 'legitimate target'? or a non-civilian forever?" Shehada asked.
Palestinian hospital staff inspect the destruction inside Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli strike early on May 13, 2025 in which Palestinian journalist Hassan Aslih was killed along with several others. (Photo by Eyad Baba/AFP)
The distinction between past military affiliation and active combatant status has been a repeated source of dispute for press freedom groups that have attempted to tally the number of journalists killed.
Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) completed a sweeping review of 229 deaths after Hamas and PIJ published obituaries identifying some people listed as journalists as members of armed groups.
CPJ ultimately removed 22 people from its list, including some it found had participated in combat—but retained others despite militant obituaries, gun photos, or past organizational ties when the evidence did not establish active combatant status.
The "Press Files" database contains 49 cases in which the main piece of evidence is one of these obituaries. Among them are people who CPJ examined and concluded were not active combatants, such as photojournalist Amr Abu Odeh—a 26-year-old freelance photographer for the Anadolu Agency and Reuters—whom the IDF database labels a Hamas "squad commander."
CPJ examined photos of Odeh wearing a military uniform, which came from a 2021 military training course with Gaza's Ministry of the Interior. The group noted that "No armed factions in Gaza have claimed Abu Odeh as being affiliated with them, and the IDF has not alleged he was involved in combat."
"In multiple cases, despite obituaries by Hamas/PIJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists investigated thoroughly and concluded those journalists were NOT engaged in any militant activity during the genocide," Shehada wrote. "They may have in the past. That doesn't make them combatants forever."
He added that the flimsiness of the IDF's evidence was more striking given the sophistication of the intelligence unit it uses to "dig up dirt" on journalists to provide post hoc justification for their killings, which has been referred to internally as the "Legitimization Cell," which was revealed in a +972 investigation.
"If that's all they can provide as "evidence" (e.g. blank pages, random snippets, outdated docs) despite having formidable resources," Shehada wrote, "then it's a vindication of Gaza's journalists!"
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NAZA Filmmakers to Make Film Available for Free Online Amid Israel's Smear Campaign
"It is the duty of every citizen whose government commits crimes to know, and of every soldier who witnessed them to tell."
Sep 24, 2026
Israeli journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are determined to ensure that their documentary, NAZA, has the farthest reach possible even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government accuses them of "blood libel" for interviewing soldiers who described the Israeli military's mass killing of civilians, and threatens to revoke their citizenship for making the film.
Abraham said Thursday morning on social media that he, Szor, and The Guardian, which produced the film, had decided to make NAZA accessible "online for free, without any time limit, so that every person can watch it and the soldiers' testimonies," starting in November.
Until then, the filmmakers are approaching movie theaters in Israel and offering the film "at no cost, in the hope that it will be screened in the country" as it is distributed worldwide.
Commentators in Israel have criticized Abraham and Szor for not making the film free, said journalist Ryan Grim, and theaters are now "being dared to follow through on their bluff and screen it."
The film builds on reporting Abraham has done since the beginning of Israel's current assault on Gaza, which started in 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. In NAZA, as well as in investigative reports for the Israeli news outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, Abraham has extensively covered the Israel Defense Forces' rules of engagement in Gaza, including its use of artificial intelligence for targeting and the IDF policy of allowing the killing of more than 100 Palestinian civilians for every Hamas commander killed.
The film's title refers to the IDF's term for the number of civilians commanders expected to be killed in a particular strike.
" Journalism is not betrayal. Criticism is not betrayal."
NAZA received a record-breaking standing ovation and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival this month, and the film will premiere in North America at the New York Film Festival this Saturday, with a theatrical release beginning four days later. A wider release in the US is scheduled for October 9, and 50 other countries and territories are also expected to release the film.
While the film has been widely acclaimed, Abraham noted that at home in Israel, "many incorrect things were said about us and about the film in the past week."
Officials have accused the filmmakers, who interviewed 24 military and intelligence officers for the film, of lying about the IDF's practices in Gaza.
Netanyahu, who is facing legislative elections next month, said after the film's release at the Venice Film Festival that he would introduce a bill to revoke the citizenship of Israelis who defame the IDF. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff at the IDF, said military lawyers were considering legal action against Abraham and Szor.
Protesters outside Szor's family home could be heard chanting, "Death sentence for traitors" one evening, and the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that the call for violence "followed days of increasingly hostile public rhetoric targeting the filmmakers, which underscores the risks created when government officials publicly target journalists."
The offices of +972 Magazine and Local Call were also reportedly broken into.
"We made the film to spark a public discussion about the government's actions in Gaza, the killing of more than 73,000 people, most of them civilians, the normalization of a war of extermination, of the notion that 'there are no uninvolved,'" said Abraham.
"Journalism is not betrayal. Criticism is not betrayal," he continued. "It is the duty of every citizen whose government commits crimes to know, and of every soldier who witnessed them to tell. There are thousands of such soldiers walking around here, who will watch the film and recognize what is described in it personally: the killing of unarmed people crossing an imaginary line, the [NAZA] approvals in the hundreds, the systematic attacks on family homes, the burning and physical destruction of Gaza, murder and shooting at hungry people in food distribution centers, and other crimes that have no justification."
Ali Abunimah, director of Electronic Intifada, said the filmmakers should have made the film free for viewers "from the start."
He also called for Abraham and Szor to "turn over any and all evidence they have that could lead to the arrest and punishment of perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide to the International Criminal Court," which has a warrant out for the arrest of Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
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Children Among at Least 21 Killed as Gaza Building Damaged by Israel's US-Backed Assault Collapses
"Today’s tragedy underscores the grave risks faced by families living in these structures and the urgent need for safer alternatives," said one UN official.
Sep 16, 2026
Nearly three years of Israeli bombardment in Gaza have left tens of thousands of Palestinians with no choice but to live in an estimated 2,000 buildings that have been severely damaged, and the danger of such precarious living conditions was starkly illustrated early Wednesday morning when an apartment building in Gaza City collapsed, killing at least 21 people and trapping dozens beneath rubble.
Rescuers reported that at least eight children were among those killed when the bombed-out building fell down onto adjacent tents that were also housing forcibly displaced Palestinians.
More than 10 families had been living in the building, which had four apartments on each floor and became even more vulnerable to collapse as damp autumn weather arrived in recent weeks.
"There are approximately 400 buildings at risk of collapse," Alessandro Mrakic, head of the United Nations Development Program's Gaza office, told Reuters. "And we know that these buildings will collapse, especially now with the upcoming winter."
Rescuers reported hearing people calling out beneath the rubble, but the search-and-rescue operation has been made more difficult by a lack of machinery, Mrakic said.
Heavy machinery is among many items that Israeli authorities restrict from entering Gaza, claiming that they'll be used by Hamas.
"There are actually people are digging with their bare hands," Mrakic told Reuters. "We need to prepare [for more deaths]."
Adequate tents and mobile homes are also blocked from entering Gaza, reported Drop Site News, contributing to families' reliance on severely damaged buildings for shelter.
When asked by The Guardian whether they were afraid to live in the building, survivors of the collapse said: “Yes, we are afraid, but where can we go? This is better than staying out on the street.”
At least 25 people were confirmed as injured and hospitalized on Wednesday.
"Across Gaza, people are living in hundreds of damaged structures assessed as unsafe, for lack of better options," said Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories. "Today’s tragedy underscores the grave risks faced by families living in these structures and the urgent need for safer alternatives. No one should have to risk their life simply to find a safe place to shelter."
"I call for urgent approvals for the entry of heavy machinery, specialized equipment, engine oil and fuel needed for search-and-rescue operations," said Alakbarov. "Tents, tarpaulins, and other nonfood items must also reach the most vulnerable communities in the next four weeks. Every possible effort must be made to save lives, protect people from further harm, and provide families with safer places to live. Every minute counts."
Videos and images circulating on social media showed rescue workers desperately trying to pull people from the rubble, and the spokesperson for Gaza's Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basal, carrying a child wrapped in a scarf stained with blood.
At least 20 people, mostly women and children, have been killed after a six-story residential building collapsed in Gaza City.
Extensive efforts are underway to rescue dozens of civilians missing under the rubble of the building, which had previously been damaged by Israeli… pic.twitter.com/gqHSgfKUEp
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) September 16, 2026
More than 90% of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel since October 2023, when it began its assault on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, including thousands of children, journalists, healthcare workers, and humanitarian workers—while Israel and its allies, including the US government, have persisted in claiming the military operation is targeting Hamas fighters.
Attacks have continued in Gaza despite a ceasefire that was brokered last October, and families have become increasingly desperate to find housing after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to take over 70% of Gaza in violation of the ceasefire deal.
The building collapse came as it was reported that the Trump administration was preparing to send Israel tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs.
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Trump Plans New Sale of 2,000-Pound Bombs to Israel, Which Keeps Using Them to Massacre Gazans
"You don't have healthcare or a living wage," said one critic who lamented the proposed $2.8 billion, taxpayer-funded transfer, "but hey, more war crimes!"
Sep 15, 2026
The Trump administration is preparing to send Israel tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, The Washington Post reported Tuesday—a move that would rank as the largest single sale of the highly destructive munitions, which the Israel Defense Forces have used in some of the deadliest US-backed airstrikes on Gaza and Lebanon.
According to the Post, the proposed $2.8 billion package includes 20,000 MK-84 bombs and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, as well as 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads. The munitions would be purchased with US taxpayer funds through the Foreign Military Financing program. The proposal has been informally presented to congressional committees that review major arms transfers.
The MK-84 is among the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal. The Post reported that its blast can propel metal fragments thousands of feet, penetrate thick concrete and metal, and create large craters.
“If Hezbollah or whoever is in a building, an MK-84 will bring down the whole building," Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, told the Post.
Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) loosened rules of engagement to effectively allow the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member in an airstrike.
Combined with the utilization of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, IDF use of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs has contributed heavily to the staggering casualty toll in Gaza, where officials say that more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 2023.
That month, Israeli forces struck Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp with such munitions, killing at least 126 Palestinians in a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander.
Michael Lynk, who served as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022, said early in the war that “the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century."
In December 2023, University of Chicago military historian Robert Pape called Israel's bombing "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”
Classified IDF intelligence data leaked last year revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians.
Israel continues to kill Palestinians with US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, despite a nearly yearlong supposed ceasefire. Last week, the IDF reportedly massacred two young girls and their parents when it bombed their home in northern Gaza.
A South Africa-led case backed by nearly 20 nations that is currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has also issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the strip, including murder and forced starvation.
“[President] Donald Trump is sending bombs paid for by American taxpayers to a government led by a wanted war criminal—all while the Netanyahu government continues to bomb Gaza and Lebanon, and block justice and accountability for Americans killed on its watch,” US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Tuesday, according to the Post. “This is not putting Americans first. We will work to stop it."
Israel denies all accusations against it. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders and supporters have repeatedly claimed that the IDF is the "world's most moral army."
The IDF has also dropped 2,000-pound bombs in Lebanon. In September 2024, it launched a massive strike on Beirut's southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and destroyed multiple residential buildings. Analyses subsequently indicated that US-made 2,000-pound bombs were likely used in the attack.
In another IDF strike on Beirut the following month, at least 22 people were killed and more than 115 wounded. Human Rights Watch and a former US military explosives expert identified remnants from the attack as coming from a US-made Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit compatible with MK80-series bombs weighing between 500 and 2,000 pounds.
The United States has nevertheless supplied Israel with thousands of the weapons during both the Biden and Trump administrations. Reuters reported in June 2024 that the Biden administration had sent Israel more than 10,000 2,000-pound bombs since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack, along with thousands of other munitions.
In May 2024, then-President Joe Biden paused delivery of a shipment containing 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs amid concerns that Israel could use them during its assault on Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians were sheltering, and where the ICJ ordered Israel to immediately halt its offensive and prevent genocidal acts. Israel ignored the order.
That pause became a rare instance in which Washington explicitly withheld a major category of offensive weaponry from Israel over concerns about civilian casualties. Trump reversed the policy almost immediately after returning to office in January 2025, ordering the release of the withheld 2,000-pound bombs.
When asked why, Trump replied: “Because they bought them.”
But with American taxpayers often footing the bill for such transfers, critics again lashed out at the practically unconditional US support for Israel.
"We don’t have universal healthcare because our government prioritizes money for bombs," leftist commentator and activist Sabrina Salvati said Tuesday on social media, lamenting that the "$2.8 billion bomb sale [is] going to Israel to slaughter more babies."
Author and leftist podcaster Wajahat Ali also took to social media to blast the proposed transfer, writing: "Congrats, MAGA. Trump is using our money to give bombs to Israel to kill civilians."
"You don't have healthcare or a living wage," he added, "but hey, more war crimes!"
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