The Israeli military suspended a battalion of reservist soldiers on Monday, days after it detained a CNN crew in the West Bank village of Tayasir.
Jeremy Diamond, CNN’s Jerusalem correspondent, and his team were in Tayasir on Thursday reporting on attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians when soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces’ Netzah Yehuda unit intervened. One of the soldiers placed Cyril Theophilos, a CNN photojournalist, in a chokehold, brought him to the ground and damaged his camera, the network reported. The crew members were detained for about two hours.
In an article published Saturday on CNN’s website, Diamond wrote that the incident “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.” Soldiers from the unit, including the one who assaulted the cameraman, asserted that all Palestinians are terrorists and that the West Bank belongs exclusively to Israel, Diamond wrote.
The IDF took a rare step this weekend, condemning the battalion over the incident — even before announcing its suspension.
“It was a bad incident that shouldn’t have happened,” Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israeli military, said at a news briefing Sunday. “It doesn’t represent how our soldiers should speak or act. … It’s already been investigated yesterday and presented to senior commanders today, and, hopefully, we’ll have conclusions and better things to say today.”
Those conclusions came early Monday.
“In light of the inquiry’s findings, the Chief of the General Staff decided to adopt the commanders’ recommendations,” said an IDF statement posted on Telegram. “Accordingly, the operational deployment currently being carried out by the reserve battalion will be suspended. The battalion will remain in reserve service and will undergo a process aimed at reinforcing its professional and ethical foundations.” The IDF also said it would release the full findings of its inquiry in the near future.
CNN declined to comment beyond what the outlet has reported.
Netzah Yehuda, also known as the 97th Battalion of the Kfir Infantry Brigade, is an ultra-Orthodox Israeli military unit that has come under intense scrutiny for alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank. In the final months of President Joe Biden’s administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stopped short of authorizing sanctions on Netzah Yehuda after suggesting for months that he would, in what would have been an unprecedented condemnation of Israel’s armed forces.
On Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog condemned violence by “extremist elements in Judea and Samaria,” in a letter addressed to Jewish diaspora leaders, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
“I share your conviction that these acts of violence stand in stark contradiction to the values upon which Israel was founded and to the enduring ethical tradition of the Jewish people,” he wrote. “Our heritage emphasizes the sanctity of human life, and grounds it in a basic biblical tenet: ‘You shall love the stranger’ — a foundational moral principle that has defined the Jewish people across generations.”
Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, commented on Herzog’s letter, saying that reports of violence by Israeli settlers are misdirected. “These criminal acts are NOT by settlers. They’re UNSETTLERS,” he posted on X. “I know many settlers-good, decent ppl. Those who steal, vandalize, & injure others are terrorists.”
The post Israel suspends battalion that detained CNN crew in West Bank appeared first on Washington Post.
