When Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast doubt on her account of being brutally assaulted by West Bank settlers during the annual Palestinian olive harvest, it felt like another attack.

Netanyahu “might as well just spit in my face and kick me in the ribs like the others did that day,” she told the Haaretz Podcast. The prime minister said “serious questions remain” about the “facts,” suggesting “200 Arabs and far-left activists confronted approximately 40 Israeli youths.”

Levine joined host Allison Kaplan Sommer following her hospitalization for extensive injuries. More than three weeks after the incident, she said, no arrests had been made and none of her stolen property had been recovered.

In an emotional interview, the veteran photojournalist, who has covered wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Ukraine, described the attack by “Jewish terrorists” as the worst she had experienced in her career.

Levine said she had documented settler violence and incitement in the West Bank for years, and it is now “at a stage where anyone abroad, when they think of Israel, they think of an image of settlers with the black masks and attacking people, attacking grandmothers, attacking homes, shattering windows, throwing rocks, trying to light homes on fire. They don't think of Israel any other way, which is really a dark stain on this country.”

Also on the podcast, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, told her story of being detained after joining a group of American rabbis volunteering to assist and protect Palestinian farmers harvesting their olives.

Asked about critics who accuse such activists of provoking confrontations and giving ammunition to Israel's far right, Jacobs said: “It's really important also that there be rabbis and people who are proud of their Jewish identity, who are connected to this land, who are not anti-Zionists, who are committed to the long-term survival of Israel next to a Palestinian state, who are out here to say that we're going to actually take action to make this possible.”

“Israel is supposed to be a refuge for the Jewish people,” she added. “Not a refuge just for Jews with certain political opinions.”

Read more at haaretz.com. 

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