An international media association has issued a scathing condemnation of Israeli soldiers who violently assaulted and detained a CNN news crew in the occupied West Bank this week, describing the incident as a "direct attack on press freedom" and demanding an immediate investigation. The Foreign Press Association (FPA), which represents hundreds of journalists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said the soldiers' actions on Thursday near the village of Tayasir were not a misunderstanding but rather a deliberate assault on journalists who were clearly identified as members of the press.
The CNN team, including photojournalist Cyril Theophilos and Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond, was reporting on the aftermath of an attack by Israeli settlers who had stormed the village of Tayasir in the early morning hours, firing guns into the air and brutally beating Palestinian residents. The soldiers arrived not to dismantle the newly established illegal outpost or detain the settlers responsible for the violence, but instead turned their weapons on the journalists and Palestinian civilians present. According to the FPA, soldiers aggressively targeted the crew, pointing their rifles at them even after journalists identified themselves, repeatedly ordering them to stop filming and threatening to confiscate their camera. One soldier then approached Theophilos from behind, placed him in a chokehold, slammed him to the ground, and damaged his camera.
During the two hours that the CNN crew and several Palestinians were detained, soldiers did not hide their ideological motivations. A soldier who identified himself as Meir acknowledged that the settler outpost he was protecting is illegal under Israeli law but stated defiantly: "But this will be a legal settlement... Slowly, slowly". When asked if he was helping make that a reality, he responded: "Of course... I help my people". Meir and another soldier told the journalists they were acting out of "revenge" for the death of an 18-year-old settler, openly stating that they were carrying out retribution because the state had failed to do so. "Listen, at the end of the day, if the state doesn't address what they did, those who murdered the youth... what do you expect us to do?" Meir told the CNN crew. The soldiers repeatedly declared that the entire West Bank belongs to Israel and the Jewish people, echoing the rhetoric of far-right Israeli government ministers.
The soldiers' assault on the CNN crew came just hours after Israeli settlers launched a violent attack on the Palestinian village of Tayasir. Residents reported that settlers stormed the village in the middle of the night, firing guns into the air and beating multiple Palestinians. Abdullah Daraghmeh, a 75-year-old Palestinian man, was beaten while asleep in his bed, suffering a fractured skull, multiple facial bone fractures, and lost teeth. "He was asleep... This is not normal," his son told CNN from the hospital. Residents described settlers establishing a new outpost on their land while soldiers stood by, failing to intervene. Imad Dabak, a resident whose home now overlooks the illegal outpost, said he would no longer dare to sleep in his house and was taking his children away. He told CNN that if settlers return, his only recourse is to film them, explaining: "I can't push them or touch them, I will be taken to the police and imprisoned if they don't kill me. The camera is my only weapon".
The assault on the CNN crew is the second such incident involving the network this month. Days earlier, during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a CNN producer suffered a fractured wrist in an "unprovoked assault" by Israeli police officers who attacked journalists documenting worshippers praying outside the Old City walls in East Jerusalem. Police threw stun grenades at the group, detained two journalists, damaged their equipment, and an officer in plain clothes twisted the producer's hand until her wrist fractured. The Union of Journalists in Israel stated that police "marked the journalists as targets" in what was not an accident but an intentional attack. The FPA has called on Israeli authorities to take immediate action against the officers involved and safeguard press freedoms rather than trample upon them.