A group of masked Israeli settlers drove up to a NBC News crew in the Palestinian village of Jalud in the occupied West Bank on Saturday and attacked them with clubs and sticks, injuring correspondent Matt Bradley, cameraman Khaldoon Eid, producer Lawahez Jabari, a driver, and Palestinian woman Aida Ahmed Abdullah — who was beaten unconscious and hospitalized — in an incident that prompted condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and renewed international concern over settler violence that Israeli security figures say has surged 63% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year.
The NBC crew was interviewing Abdullah, 51, who told them she and her family had been driven from their home by settlers near Jalud, a Palestinian town south of Nablus in the northern West Bank. Video of the attack shows a gray car with Israeli license plates reversing up a hill toward the group, with a masked man in a blue tracksuit leaning from the window holding a stick. The occupants exited the vehicle and began beating members of the crew and Abdullah, smashing the crew's vehicle windshield and damaging camera equipment. "They jumped out, beat us, then jumped back in the car," Bradley told NBC on-air. Bradley was struck twice on the arm and described himself as "recovering well." Abdullah was knocked to the ground and rendered unconscious. Producer Jabari said she saw one of the attackers carrying a gun, though it was not discharged. All five received medical treatment; Abdullah remained hospitalized Saturday evening.
"They smashed our car windshield, hit our crew with clubs and beat Aida unconscious. We were in the middle of a Palestinian area next to Palestinian houses." — NBC News correspondent Matt Bradley and cameraman Khaldoon Eid
Netanyahu condemned the attack in a statement, calling it the work of "a handful of rioters" and saying that such violence "harms Israel's standing in the world." His office spokesman Doron Spielman also condemned the incident, calling it a "grave injustice." The condemnation, while appropriate, lands in a context where settler violence has reached documented record levels and Israeli security forces have been repeatedly criticized by human rights organizations and Israeli courts alike for failing to intervene as settlers encircle and enter Palestinian villages. Israeli security figures recorded 660 settler attacks in the first six months of 2026. The UN reported 76 Palestinian deaths in the West Bank — from Israeli forces or settlers — by late July. The village of Qusra, adjacent to Jalud and the site of additional settler violence Saturday including pepper spray attacks on Palestinian workers, has been at the center of an ongoing settler encirclement of privately owned Palestinian land that began in early August.
The attack on an international news crew is a significant escalation in the pattern of settler violence that has previously targeted Palestinian civilians, Palestinian journalists, and Israeli human rights monitors. The presence of video and the prominence of an American news network as the target has drawn substantially greater international attention than the many prior incidents that went largely unreported. The U.S. State Department called the attack unacceptable and demanded Israeli authorities hold the attackers accountable. No arrests had been reported as of Sunday morning.
Settler violence in the West Bank has been a persistent and escalating security and legal challenge for successive Israeli governments. The Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly ordered the state to remove illegal outposts and protect Palestinian residents and property, with enforcement remaining inconsistent. The Biden administration imposed sanctions and visa bans on a small number of settlers involved in violence. The Trump administration has not publicly addressed settler violence as a foreign policy priority. Saturday's attack is the most prominent incident involving an international press crew in the West Bank in recent years.
Netanyahu is right that settler violence harms Israel's standing in the world — but labeling the attackers a "handful of rioters" understates the systemic nature of what Israeli security data itself describes as a 63% surge in settler attacks in the first half of this year. Condemning individual incidents while the pattern accelerates is not an accountability policy. The Israeli government has both the legal authority and the moral obligation to protect Palestinian residents and international journalists in the West Bank from the violence of its own citizens. Saturday's attack on an American news crew, captured on video, is as clear a test of that obligation as any incident in recent memory.