US Secretary of State Rubio separately urges Israel to “crack down” on settler violence after attack on photographer. Published October 17, 2026 October 17, 2026 US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has demanded that Israel prosecute and imprison those responsible for the attack on US journalist Heidi Levine in the occupied West Bank, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said Washington wants Israel to do more to deter settler attacks. despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards,” Huckabee wrote in “We are very disturbed by those images and what we are seeing,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “We have asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on those things.” Israelis “to prevent that from happening in the future.” “We don’t need that now; Israel doesn’t need it now,” she added. Levine was covering the Palestinians’ annual olive harvest on Friday in the occupied West Bank when Israeli settlers brutally attacked her and several Palestinians. The Israeli settlers broke into the area, beat her and stole her passport, phone, wallet and equipment, according to witnesses. The perpetrators, armed with bottles and slingshots, “were kicking me for about 10 minutes, and I was trying to grab my cameras and my bag,” Levine said. Jasper Nathaniel, a freelance journalist who witnessed the attack, told Al Jazeera that Levine “was in very, very bad shape. She couldn’t really get up off the ground.” Levine, 64, was taken to hospital after the attack in Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah. The American photojournalist underwent surgery on her finger, which nearly came off her hand, and was left with a broken rib and multiple broken vertebrae, as well as lacerations, her daughter told The Associated Press news agency. American freelance photojournalist Heidi Levine lies on a stretcher in the hospital emergency room. government of Ramallah, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on October 16, 2026. [AFP]Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants to shore up his right-wing, pro-settlement base ahead of close elections on Oct. 27, said Friday that Palestinians or “far-left” activists may have been responsible for the attack on Levine and other Palestinians. Meanwhile, Ambassador Huckabee, a staunch ally of Israel who has harshly criticized Israeli settler attacks on Americans, did not identify the culprits as settlers after Netanyahu attempted to sow doubts about their identity. The Trump-appointed ambassador met with Palestinian-Americans in the occupied West Bank town of Turmus Aya in September to hear testimony from locals about their experiences with pogroms. In August, Huckabee called the days-long siege by Israeli settlers an “act of terror.” The State Department criticized Friday’s attack by using a cautious tone about the beating of Levine, declaring condemnation of “criminal violence on any side.” Israeli settlers have been involved in at least 170 anti-Palestinian pogroms since September 27, around the start of the olive harvest, according to Yesh Din, an Israeli group that monitors illegal Israeli settlements.
