Guests
- Jasper NathanielNew York-based reporter who covers Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
- Adele ShokoJewish Russian independent journalist and Palestine solidarity activist based in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli settlers armed with clubs, rocks and a knife attacked a convoy of journalists in the West Bank on Saturday, the latest targeting of foreign journalists documenting the Israeli occupation. Four settlers have reportedly been detained over the attack. The convoy, which included CNN’s Jeremy Diamond, were accompanying the father of Palestinian American Saif Musallet to the site where he was beaten to death by Israeli settlers one year ago. To date, no one has been arrested for Musallet’s killing.
Independent journalist and Palestine solidarity activist Adele Shoko, who was in one of the cars, says the attack is part of an “unprecedented” escalation of settler activity in the occupied West Bank, taking place in so-called Area A, which is nominally under the full control of the Palestinian Authority. “Area C is almost entirely ethnically cleansed by the settlers backed by the Israeli state, and they moved to Area B, attacking big villages. But Area A is another level.”
We also speak with Jasper Nathaniel, who was also in the convoy and has been attacked multiple times while reporting in the occupied West Bank. He says pro-Israel advocates who accuse journalists, activists and other international observers of staging “publicity stunts” are downplaying how routine settler intimidation and violence has become. “If you spend enough time in the West Bank — and by enough time, I mean a couple days — something like that is going to happen to you,” says Nathaniel.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers armed with clubs, rocks and a knife on Saturday attacked a group of journalists, including CNN’s Jeremy Diamond. Four settlers have been reportedly detained for their alleged involvement in the attack.
It happened exactly a year after the murder of 20-year-old Palestinian American Saif Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers. To date, no one’s been arrested for his killing. He was born in Florida, worked at his family’s ice cream shop there.
The journalists were accompanying his dad back to the site of his son’s death. As they left, their cars were attacked by the settlers, chased out of town. In a minute, we’ll be joined by two of the journalists. But first, this is the video footage of the attack shared with Democracy Now! The voices you hear are our next guests, Adele Shoko and Jasper Nathaniel. In the video, you see the settlers attempting to slash the tires of the armored CNN vehicle and then breaking the windshield of the separate car carrying the other journalists. The video is courtesy of independent journalist Andrey X, who was sitting in the back.
JASPER NATHANIEL: He’s saying “stop.”
ADELE SHOKO: Whoa! He’s ready to throw a rock. Look. He’s threatening with a rock.
JASPER NATHANIEL: They are not letting us pass. The guy is standing in front of the car in front of us, the CNN car, not letting him pass. And they’re holding up rocks. … Yeah, we need to fly behind them. Oh, he’s got a knife. He’s going for the tire.
ADELE SHOKO: Oh my god!
GABRIELE MICALIZZI: Go. Go. Go. Go.
ADELE SHOKO: Oh [bleep]! No, no, no, no, no! He’s going to our car.
JASPER NATHANIEL: Go. Drive. Drive.
ADELE SHOKO: No! No! No!
JASPER NATHANIEL: Drive. Move! Move!
GABRIELE MICALIZZI: Move.
JASPER NATHANIEL: Get the [bleep] out of the way! Move! Move! Move!
GABRIELE MICALIZZI: Move. Move.
ANDREY X: Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive.
JASPER NATHANIEL: Move!
ANDREY X: Go. Go. Go.
JASPER NATHANIEL: Watch out! Watch out!
AMY GOODMAN: This attack happened just days after armed Israeli settlers carrying U.S.-made M4 rifles surrounded a van carrying Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna, who was visiting a Palestinian village that had been destroyed by settlers. Congressmember Khanna said his delegation was detained for about 90 minutes.
For more, we’re joined by Jasper Nathaniel, New York-based writer and reporter who covers Israel’s occupation of the West Bank on his Substack, Infinite Jaz. He’s just returned from the West Bank last night after a month there. So, describe what exactly took place on Saturday.
JASPER NATHANIEL: The context is really important, because the town where this happened, it’s called al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya. It’s a village east of Ramallah. And this is a village that is made up of largely American citizens, actually, Palestinian Americans. And if you might remember, Amy, last year, when we spoke about Mohammed Ibrahim, who was abducted, a kid who was abducted by Israeli soldiers, he was an American from this same town. Sayfollah was his first cousin. One year ago Saturday, Sayfollah was beaten to death by settlers on his own private land.
And so, the land that we were trying to reach is largely owned by American citizens, actually, Palestinian Americans. Settlers have been occupying it since last April. And basically, anybody who tries to get to their own land is attacked. I tried to get there a year ago in October and was immediately attacked.
And so, this year, on Saturday, his father, Kamel, wanted to get there, both because he wanted to go to the spot where his son took his last breaths, but also because it’s his land. And he wants to show the settlers who are living on his land, who are living in the farmhouses that the Palestinians there have built on their land — he wanted to show them this is our land, and we will come reach it when we want to.
On the way in, we talked to the mayor of Sinjil, who — Sinjil is the town that borders these olive fields. And what he told us was, “We know that there is a settler on this land who has an M16, and he shoots from afar. He will just see a car coming, and he’ll shoot at it.” And so, you know, we understood that this was a pretty dangerous gambit right away.
And it should be emphasized that the U.S. Embassy, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, I know for a fact that he is aware that settlers are occupying this land that belongs to American citizens. He, of course, is aware that an American 20-year-old was beaten to death on this land. I know this because he spoke to Kamel, the father, about it. He has still just allowed the settlers to stay there and attack anybody who comes near.
So, on Saturday, we went with Kamel to try to reach that spot. There were two cars. There was a CNN SUV, which was bulletproof and armored and had slash-proof tires. Kamel was in that car with Jeremy Diamond, you know, the cameraperson, a driver and the producer. They all had bulletproof vests. You know, the independent journalists behind them, we were in a rented Kia, and we didn’t have any of that protection. We were part of the same convoy, though, just our two cars.
So, we reach the spot where Saif was killed. We get out of the car. Kamel has a sort of private moment. He would later say that it was actually — he thought maybe it would be peaceful, but it actually was very distressing, because he was just imagining what happened to his son there. But that feeling didn’t last, because within a couple of minutes we saw a car full of settlers racing towards us.
And so, we got back in our cars. We tried to drive out. The settlers blocked the road. And then, what you saw in that video is that the settlers first attacked the CNN car, but they couldn’t do any damage to it because it’s armored. He tries to slash the tires, one of the settlers, and then the CNN car speeds away, and they turn to us. And so, that’s when you see a settler, you know, jump on the hood of our car, smash our windshield. They were throwing rocks at it. And we had to basically escape in, you know, what was a high-speed chase, basically.
AMY GOODMAN: We hear the screams of another journalist, Adele Shoko, who’s joining us now from Ramallah, a Jewish Russian independent journalist based in the West Bank. If you can describe your experience, as well, and why you were there following Saif’s dad that day, Adele?
ADELE SHOKO: Hi. Thank you for having me.
For me, it’s important to join Palestinians to help them to get to their land, because we understand that this privilege of us having the citizenship or privilege of the CNN crew who have an armored vehicle or bulletproof vests, and because of they’re the mainstream media, it allows them to actually — it’s the only way for them to get to the land that was occupied.
And it’s very important to mention that this land is in Area A, which is unprecedented, because in the West Bank, which is divided into Area A, B and C, the Area C is almost entirely ethnically cleansed by the settlers, backed by the Israeli state, and they moved to Area B, attacking big villages. But Area A is another level. And we have to point it out.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, this happened at the same time — a few days after California Congressmember Ro Khanna — and I want to go to a clip of Ro Khanna now — was also detained by Israeli settlers, armed settlers, and Israeli soldiers during his visit to the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Over the weekend, he posted video evidence on social media of Israeli settlers carrying U.S.-made M4 assault rifles surrounding his van in the South Hebron Hills and blocking him from visiting a Palestinian village destroyed by Israeli settlers. He said his delegation was blocked for about an hour and a half.
REP. RO KHANNA: I am certainly, probably, the first American politician who’s been detained by the IDF and Israeli settlers. I mean, we were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed. They had destroyed the school. They had destroyed that village. And we were just looking at it, and these hoodlums come in with machine guns, an M4, an American-made machine gun, and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Congressmember Ro Khanna. As we begin to wrap up, Jasper Nathaniel, if you can talk about these two attacks?
JASPER NATHANIEL: Yeah, I mean, the response to the Ro Khanna incident, I’ve found sort of grimly amusing, because the critics are saying this was a publicity stunt, this was set up, this was rigged, they went somewhere that they weren’t supposed to go, they didn’t work with the Israeli embassy. The reality is, if you spend enough time in the West Bank — and by “enough time,” I mean a couple days — something like that is going to happen to you. It’s an inevitability.
And, you know, just to put a fine point on that, I was actually in the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta right before that incident happened. Ro Khanna and his delegation visited then. I saw him there. And the people there explained what’s happening to them, which is basically their land is being stolen in real time. About an hour after Ro Khanna’s team left, we were attacked in that village, so very violently by a group of settlers who live in an outpost right next door. So, the irony is that had had Ro Khanna not gotten back on that bus and, you know, gotten hijacked, he would have actually been present during an attack, an actual violent attack.
And so, and then, you know, like you said, this happens. Me and, you know, the Palestinians there are violently attacked. Ro Khanna’s bus is held up by settlers. Two days later, again, there’s this other brutal attack. And I think it’s important to just, you know, reiterate what Adele said, which is that, you know, as journalists, especially as Westerners, like, we have a privilege of knowing that, frankly, the stakes of killing one of us are much higher than of killing a Palestinian. You know, that’s why we go into these places, to basically show the brutality and the violence of settlers. Like, if this is what they’ll do to me, and this is what they’ll do to a congressman, just imagine what they do to the Palestinians.
In Umm al-Khair, after I left, the attacks have just continued daily. Yesterday, they came in — the Israeli military came in and demolished a family home, just because. And so, you know, the pervasiveness of the cruelty in the West Bank, in the occupied West Bank, by the state of Israel and by the settlers, which are backed by the state, is just so pervasive that I would, frankly, challenge anybody to go into the West Bank, go into places like Masafer Yatta or even, you know, Sinjil or these villages outside Ramallah, and not face something like that. I mean, it’s just impossible.
AMY GOODMAN: Jasper Nathaniel, I want to thank you for being with us, New York-based journalist covering Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. His Substack, Infinite Jaz, and Jewish Russian independent journalist Adele Shoko, joining us from Ramallah, from the occupied West Bank.
Coming up, the federal government has given the green light to a $111 billion megamerger deal between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Twelve state attorneys general, led by California, are suing to block the merger. We’ll speak with California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta. Back in 20 seconds.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Heads Held High” by the New York City Palestinian Youth Choir.
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