Mike Huckabee called the beating of Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine a "despicable act of terror" and demanded Israel prosecute her attackers "to the fullest extent of the law" — nine days before Israel's election, and after Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Palestinians or "far-left" activists might be to blame.
Published 18 October 2026 · 05:23 GMT
United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee demanded on Saturday that Israel investigate, arrest and prosecute “to the fullest extent of the law” the men who brutally beat American photojournalist Heidi Levine in the occupied West Bank a day earlier, calling the assault “a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards.”
“Heidi Levine, photojournalist for Washington Post suffered serious injuries from vicious & cowardly attack. Heidi is US Citizen, clear ID as journalist,” Huckabee wrote on X. “Details of who under investigation, but those who attacked unarmed reporter should spend YRS in prison. We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this.”
Hours later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said President Donald Trump was “disturbed” by images of the attack. “We’re very disturbed by those images and what we’re seeing,” Rubio told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, adding that the State Department had inquired about the case and expected to hear back from the US embassy in Jerusalem by Sunday. “We’ve asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff,” he said.
The statements came a day after Levine, 64, was kicked and beaten for some ten minutes by masked Israeli settlers while covering the Palestinian olive harvest near Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah — the assault documented in the Bureau’s account of the attack itself.
The condemnations also followed a remarkable claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who suggested on Friday that Palestinians or “far-left” activists may have been responsible — an assertion Huckabee, pointedly, did not endorse. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, for his part, telephoned Levine to apologize, saying the attack “does not represent the citizens or the values of the State of Israel.”
Levine was covering the annual Palestinian olive harvest on Friday, 16 October, in fields near Abu Falah, when masked Israeli settlers stormed the area armed with bottles and slingshots, according to witnesses and Levine’s own account. From her hospital bed she described at least 50 masked men with slingshots gathered on the hilltop: “And when they came running down, I was attacked, pushed to the ground,” she said, “and they just kept kicking me and kicking me.”
Speaking to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Levine said the beating lasted “at least 10 minutes.” She had identified herself to the attackers as an American journalist and was wearing a protective vest clearly marked PRESS on the front and back, according to The Washington Post and witnesses. The attackers stole her passport, telephone, wallet and camera equipment.
Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist who witnessed the assault, told Al Jazeera that Levine “was in very, very bad shape. She couldn’t really get up off the ground.” Levine was taken to a government hospital in Ramallah, where she underwent surgery on a finger nearly detached from her hand. Her daughter told the Associated Press that Levine was also left with a broken rib, multiple broken vertebrae and lacerations. She was later transferred to Beilinson Hospital; the Jerusalem Post described her condition as moderate.
Levine told CPJ she did not personally see Israeli soldiers at the scene but saw tear gas and stun grenades being fired — suggesting a military presence. Witnesses said soldiers who arrived fired tear gas toward the Palestinians and journalists rather than stopping the settlers. The Washington Post said it was “outraged” and urged “a thorough investigation.” Israel Police said an investigation was opened after receiving an IDF report on the clashes.
No arrests had been publicly reported as of Saturday evening. It is not known whether the police investigation will lead to charges — prosecutions of settlers for violence against Palestinians and internationals remain uncommon, according to United Nations figures cited in US reporting.
The exact role of the Israeli military remains contested: Levine says she did not see soldiers herself; witnesses say they arrived and fired tear gas at the victims’ side. The IDF has not publicly detailed its account.
It is also unclear what the US embassy in Jerusalem will report back to Washington by Sunday, as Rubio expects — and whether that readout will amount to a formal demarche to the Israeli government. The full extent of Levine’s injuries is still emerging, and her recovery timeline is unknown.
A sitting US ambassador publicly demanding that an allied government jail its own citizens is rare in any context. That it is Mike Huckabee — a Trump appointee and one of Israel’s most ardent American supporters — makes it rarer still. Huckabee has criticized settler attacks against Americans before: in August he called a days-long settler siege an “act of terror.”
The demand lands nine days before Israel’s 27 October legislative election, in which Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is projected to struggle. Netanyahu’s Friday suggestion that Palestinians or “far-left” activists might be behind the attack — which Huckabee pointedly declined to echo — reads as pre-election base management: admitting settler guilt would cost him the pro-settlement right. Huckabee’s refusal to go along turns a law-enforcement question into a pre-election diplomatic test.
Beyond the personalities, the case crystallizes a structural pattern: CPJ documented at least 16 incidents in 2026 alone involving at least 35 local and international journalists subjected to physical attack, harassment, obstruction or intimidation in the West Bank. And Yesh Din, an Israeli group monitoring settlements, counts at least 170 settler “pogroms” against Palestinians since 27 September, around the start of the olive harvest.
Three things make this more than a condemnation cycle. First, the messenger. Huckabee is not a critic of Israel looking for an opening; he is a longtime evangelical ally whose August “act of terror” label for a settler siege already signaled that even Israel’s friends in Washington have a red line. When such a figure publicly demands jail time, it signals to the Israeli system that American patience is finite.
Second, the election. Netanyahu’s instant deflection — Palestinians or “far-left” activists — is classic pre-election base management: admitting settler guilt ten days before a vote his coalition may lose would cost him the pro-settlement right. Huckabee’s refusal to endorse the deflection leaves Netanyahu exposed between his American patron and his domestic base.
Third, enforcement. Israel’s record on prosecuting settler violence is poor; UN figures cited in US coverage note prosecutions remain uncommon. A “full investigation” that ends without charges would confirm the impunity the South sees; charges would mark a genuine break.
If arrests and charges follow, the precedent could shift how the IDF and police handle harvest-season violence — the weeks when the risk is highest. If they do not, the episode will be cited by press-freedom groups as evidence that even an American passport and a PRESS vest no longer deter. Congress is already in the frame: several US lawmakers called for an investigation, and Representative Rosa DeLauro’s warning about what Palestinian families face unobserved is likely to be quoted back at the administration.
The pattern is the story as much as the incident: days earlier, settlers beat a French mayor and attacked a European diplomats’ convoy in the West Bank, drawing a French demand that Israel halt “criminal violence.” Two assaults on protected foreigners in one week — a journalist, then diplomats — suggest the harvest season’s violence is escalating faster than the condemnations.
Rubio expects the US embassy in Jerusalem to report back by Sunday — watch whether that readout is routine or becomes a formal demarche. Israel Police’s investigation, opened on an IDF report, is the procedural track to watch: names, arrests, charges.
Israel’s 27 October election will decide whether Netanyahu — who tried to muddy the perpetrators’ identity — remains the man Washington must deal with. And the olive harvest continues: with Yesh Din counting 170 settler attacks since late September, the coming weeks will show whether Huckabee’s “fullest extent of the law” was a moment or a policy. Readers catching up should start with the full account of Friday’s assault on Levine and the harvesters she was covering.
West: In Washington, the story reads as a stress test of the US-Israel relationship under Trump: the president “disturbed,” his secretary of state demanding a “crackdown,” his ambassador using the language of counterterrorism — “despicable act of terror” — against Israeli citizens. Her employer, the Post, framed it as an attack on the press itself. In Israel the establishment split: Herzog apologized and promised the rule of law would act “with full force”; Netanyahu sowed doubt about the perpetrators’ identity ten days before an election his coalition may lose.
East: The East’s verified evidence chain runs through ANI, India’s principal news wire, whose Jerusalem dispatch carried the story — Rubio’s “disturbed,” Huckabee’s demand, Herzog’s apology, Levine’s hospital-bed account and CPJ’s pattern data — to South Asian audiences. The framing there is diplomatic rather than partisan: an American ambassador attaching Washington’s name to a specific legal outcome, raising the political cost of inaction for the Israeli government. No Chinese or Japanese state-outlet account had surfaced in the Bureau’s East feeds at verification time.
Global South: Al Jazeera’s Doha newsroom originated the detailed international account, with inputs from AFP, AP and Reuters — including the AFP photograph of Levine on a Ramallah hospital gurney and her daughter’s account of the injuries to the Associated Press. The framing centers impunity: a US ambassador forced to demand what Palestinian victims of the same settler violence almost never get — investigation, arrest, prosecution. Yesh Din’s count — 170 pogroms since the harvest began — supplies the structural backdrop: the attack on Levine was not an aberration but the most internationally visible instance of a documented campaign.
On Saturday 17 October, the US ambassador to Israel wrote on X that Israel must mount “a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law” of whoever beat Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine. He called the assault “a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards” and said “those who attacked [an] unarmed reporter should spend YRS in prison.”
Levine, 64, is an American photojournalist working with The Washington Post. On 16 October she was covering the Palestinian olive harvest near Abu Falah when masked Israeli settlers beat and kicked her for about ten minutes, stealing her passport, phone, wallet and cameras. She needed surgery on a nearly detached finger and suffered a broken rib, broken vertebrae and lacerations.
Israel holds legislative elections on 27 October, with Netanyahu’s far-right coalition projected to struggle. His suggestion that Palestinians or “far-left” activists — not settlers — attacked Levine looks like pre-election base management. Huckabee’s refusal to endorse that version turns a policing question into a diplomatic test neither man can easily walk back.
With unusual caution — which is why this episode stands out. Huckabee himself broke precedent in August by calling a settler siege an “act of terror,” and in September he met Palestinian-Americans in Turmus Aya about settler pogroms. UN figures show prosecutions of settlers remain uncommon. Whether this demand produces charges will set the template for the next attack.
