Video taking off 21x its usual first day

Heidi Levine recounts West Bank olive-harvest attack from a hospital bed

NPR News Now's brief report pairs field footage from Turmus Ayya with the Washington Post photographer's own account and a police pledge to investigate.

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NPR Story of October 17, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 194,583 views a day, 22 times a normal first day on this channel (9,070).

Israeli settlers beat Palestinians and a U.S. photojournalist in West Bank attacks

It happened during the harvest. Palestinians were gathering olives near Turmus Ayya in the occupied West Bank on Friday when masked Israeli settlers attacked, injuring several people, among them the American photojournalist Heidi Levine.

NPR correspondent Hadeel Al-Shalchi reports that the settlers set olive groves on fire and hurled stones with slingshots. The footage opens with masked figures throwing objects and running between the trees, then shows responders carrying Levine, who was wearing a protective vest clearly marked "PRESS" while on assignment for The Washington Post.

Levine then speaks from her hospital bed. "They kept kicking me, and kicking me like probably 50 times," she says. Al-Shalchi adds that the Post reported its photographer was receiving medical care and was safe. Israeli police said they would investigate the incident and bring those involved to justice.

Host Korva Coleman anchors the minute-long segment, part of NPR's News Now podcast, which usually reaches this channel as a quick news brief. This one drew nearly 130,000 views in its first eleven hours, a very different first day from most of NPR's Shorts.

The comments arrived even faster: by those first hours there were already dozens of times as many as an NPR Short usually gathers in a full day. Much of the discussion turns on the promised investigation, with many viewers asking what it will look into and what would follow from it.

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