Soldiers who detained and allegedly assaulted a CNN crew reporting on a settler attack in Tayasir this week were caught on camera saying the entire West Bank belongs to Jews and that they were avenging the killing of a settler days earlier.
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond said a soldier put his cameraman in a chokehold as troops tried to prevent them from filming at an illegal West Bank outpost.
Two of the soldiers told the reporters they had been friends with 18-year-old Yehuda Sherman, whose death in a suspected ramming attack near Nablus last Saturday triggered a wave of settler violence.
In CNN’s reportage, a soldier identified as Meir could be heard telling CNN Diamond that the soldiers were carrying out “revenge” for Sherman’s death, adding: “Listen, at the end of the day, if the state doesn’t address what they did — those who murdered the settler… what do you expect us to do?”
Meir and another soldier could also be heard telling Diamond in the report, when asked if they think the West Bank belonged to them: “We’re here because it’s our land… the Jews.”
Diamond and two of his colleagues said in a first-person account that they and Palestinians from Tayasir were detained for about two hours on Thursday, hours after settlers attacked the northern West Bank village.
Palestinian media reported Thursday that four people were hospitalized as a result of the overnight attack, even as settlers erected new structures in the vicinity of Tayasir.
BREAKING: Israeli settlers are carrying out a pogrom right now in the village of Tayasir in the West Bank, opening fire on civilians. Multiple people have been injured.
The situation is horrific. Residents are pleading for help. pic.twitter.com/IoauWfZMf6
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) March 26, 2026
CNN later filmed one of the wounded, 75-year-old Abdullah Daraghmeh, in a hospital bed with a bandage across his swollen face. The outlet cited eyewitnesses as saying Daraghmeh was in his bed at home when invading settlers beat him “to a pulp.”
The report showed an illegal outpost that Diamond said “those same settlers” had recently established adjacent to Tayasir, with “soldiers standing idly by” until noticing the CNN journalists and the Palestinians who were with them.
Footage shows three soldiers in full gear, at least one of whom points his assault rifle directly at the camera, yelling “halt” in Arabic and approaching the crew, even as Diamond and the others identify themselves, in Hebrew, as journalists.
“The commander came straight for our camera… a soldier has just put photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold,” Diamond says in the report, as the camera can be seen pointed to the ground and then upward while Diamond argues with the soldiers.
The soldier demands Theophilos turn off the camera before another soldier smacks away Diamond’s phone.
The report then shows soldiers deploying on the roof of a Palestinian home in the village, as the soldiers carrying out the detention check passports and walk the journalists to their cars.
In one scene, Diamond is sitting in his car as Meir stands guard outside. Meir opens the car door, saying, “Am Yisrael Chai” (The nation of Israel lives.)
When Diamond tells Meir that even under Israeli law, the settler outpost he is protecting is illegal, the soldier responds: “That’s true, but it will be a legal settlement… slowly, slowly.” He adds: “I’m helping my people.”
Says Diamond: “The two hours we spent detained… laid bare the settler ideology motivating many of the soldiers who operate in the occupied West Bank – and the ways in which soldiers frequently act in service of the settler movement.”
He cites a “large body of evidence documented by journalists, activists and Palestinians that shows Israeli soldiers supporting or standing idly by as Israeli settlers attack Palestinians or encroach on their land.”
In response to the report, the IDF told CNN that “the actions and behavior of the soldiers in the incident are incompatible with what is expected of IDF soldiers,” adding that the incident would be “thoroughly reviewed.”
Rising settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank are being reported daily but rarely prosecuted. In recent months, repeated attacks — often from wildcat settler outposts — have led dozens of Palestinian families to flee the northern Jordan Valley, where Tayasir is located.
Earlier this month, Jordan Valley Brigade commander Col. Gilad Shriki told residents of five Palestinian shepherding communities in the area that they should leave because Israel would soon erect a fence separating their homes from territory under Palestinian Authority control, according to residents who spoke with The Times of Israel.
The fence Shriki was referring to would separate the West Bank’s Areas A and B, which are under some measure of PA control, from Area C, which is under full Israeli control and where the shepherding communities are located.
One of the residents who spoke with The Times of Israel said he told Shriki: “My identity is here.”
“He told me, ‘Take your ID and go.’ He said: ‘This is Area C, this land belongs to the Jews,’” said the resident.
Nurit Yohanan contributed to this report.
Source:
www.timesofisrael.com
