On March 28, Israeli settlers carried out a pogrom in the Palestinian village of Jinba, with the full backing — and later, participation — of the Israeli army. This was just four days after a similar and much-publicized attack in the nearby village of Susiya, yet it received only a fraction of the international media attention: after all, none of the victims had won an Oscar.

It began at 7 a.m. when an Israeli settler driving an ATV charged at a pair of Palestinian shepherds and their flock on the outskirts of the village, located in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank. In a video from the incident, the settler can be seen assaulting one of the shepherds right before the clip ends.

What happens next is unclear, but the settler himself apparently sustained minor injuries. Despite the video showing that the settler was not even with a flock, and another in which he drives away on his ATV, right-wing media in Israel quickly disseminated a narrative that a Jewish shepherd had been “lynched.”

A couple of hours later, around 15 settlers — some masked and armed — drove into the village and began assaulting residents. “The settlers come every week, but we’ve never seen such a criminal attack,” 48-year-old resident Laila Mohammed told +972. “They came armed with sticks, stones, and clubs, and ordered us to sit down. We didn’t dare move. They beat a father and son as if they wanted to kill them. When we saw the child’s blood after they beat him, we screamed.”

Several residents were wounded, including a teenager who suffered a severe head injury. In one of the videos from the attack, a settler can be heard saying “Film it, film it,” apparently in an attempt to incriminate residents who tried to defend their homes by throwing stones. 

According to residents, Israeli soldiers were present a short distance away from the village yet did not intervene. “They just stood there and watched,” 70-year-old Musa Jabrin Rabi’ told +972. Pointing to his neighbor’s cave, he said: “Settlers beat the child and broke another person’s arm in here. I was 200 meters away. I called for help. What could we do?”

Shortly after 10:00 a.m., and only after most of the settlers had got back into their cars and driven away, the army raided the village and blocked the entrance. “We told the soldiers, ‘Come save the child,’” Mohammed recounted. “The soldiers told me to step back, and fired tear gas at us. They didn’t come to help the child; they came to protect the settlers. The child was bleeding from his legs and nose and was made to wait two hours for medical help.”

The army, who were later joined by police, then rounded up all of the men in the village — ranging from teenagers to the elderly, including some who had only arrived after the attack had ended. “The soldiers handcuffed them, blindfolded them, and forced them to lie face down on the ground,” Mohammed explained.

“We told them to call an ambulance for the wounded, but they ignored us,” Rabi’, who was among the detainees, explained. “They tied our hands and made us sit like dogs. We weren’t allowed to move. They held us for five or six hours, including people who had come to visit their families for Ramadan and were dragged out of their cars.”

“They arrested everyone the settler pointed at — young and old, even people who could barely walk,” said a 28-year-old who arrived in the village to visit relatives as the attack was happening, and was arrested together with residents. “They took us to a military base, and from there to the police station in Kiryat Arba [a nearby Israeli settlement]. During our detention, they kept shouting ‘Quiet!’ and beating us.”

In total, 22 men were arrested in Jinba that day. Fifteen were released later in the evening, but seven others, including Mohammed’s son, remained in Israeli custody until today.

But the abuse of the community did not end there. At 1:30 a.m. on March 29, the army raided the village again. According to residents, among the soldiers were some of the settlers who had attacked them earlier in the day, now wearing military uniforms. During what the army described as a “weapons search,” the soldiers destroyed everything in their path — ransacking homes, breaking windows, vandalizing the local school, and pouring out supplies of olive oil and water onto the ground.

On Monday evening, with unusual haste, the army released the findings of its internal investigation into the ransacking of the village. It announced that a platoon commander would be dismissed, while several senior officers would receive reprimands. Additionally, one commander and two soldiers were sentenced to seven days in military prison. However, the investigation did not mention the fact that Area Defense personnel — settlers on reserve duty who are responsible for the security of their settlements — had taken part in the night raid, which the army later confirmed to +972.

‘We recognized them — they were the same people’

On a tour of Jinba earlier this week, the extent of the damage was evident. The village’s school had been completely vandalized: its doors and windows were either ripped from their frames or shattered, tables and chairs had been thrown around, posters torn from the walls, and a small Palestinian flag burned.

All the cameras in the village, which had recorded parts of the settler attack on Friday morning, had been destroyed. Israeli settlers and soldiers had also completely ransacked the village clinic; everything inside was overturned and broken, including treatment beds and supply cabinets. A sign thanking European donors at the entrance did nothing to protect the site.

Inside the homes, the destruction was indiscriminate. The attackers had wrecked furniture and scattered food everywhere, along with clothing and personal belongings. One resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, was sorting through piles of clothes strewn across every room with her children. “Why did they do this?” she asked, without waiting for an answer. “We didn’t go to them, they came to us.”

Mohammed described the army’s nighttime raid: “There were 18 women in the house because the men had been arrested,” she recounted. “We opened the door and saw [soldiers]. I told them the little children were sleeping, but they forced us out of the house at gunpoint. We recognized them: in the morning, they had come in civilian clothes, and in the evening, they came in military uniforms. They were the same people.

“They didn’t just search; they destroyed,” she continued. “They entered our room, threw around the furniture, the mattresses, everything. They smashed the windows and tore down part of the roof. Then they locked us in a room, left one soldier to guard the door, and moved on to the other rooms. We have a cave where we store food, and they dumped it all — the ghee, the cheese, everything — onto the ground. We were fasting, and we had no water to drink for suhoor [the pre-dawn meal during Ramadan].”

According to Rabi’, more than 100 soldiers took part in the night raid. “They carried hammers and smashed everything: houses, furniture, kitchens, refrigerators, and washing machines,” he recounted. “They left nothing intact. They forced us to sit outside in terrible weather, from 1 a.m. until 6:30 a.m.. When we returned, we saw they had slashed the women’s clothes with knives.”

On Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi visited the area alongside Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, head of the army’s Central Command, who presented the findings of their internal investigation. Yet Nidal Younis, the head of the local council in Jinba and for the whole Masafer Yatta region, told +972 that the chief of staff and senior military officers did not enter the village to see the damage firsthand. “No one from the army spoke to us. We saw vehicles and a helicopter near the outpost from which they came to attack us, but we didn’t know who was there.”

According to Younis, they learned about the army’s investigation from the media. “We read about it in the news like everyone else,” he said. “If something real happens, if the army respects the people, we will be satisfied. The important thing is not what the army says in its investigations, but what actually happens: that they stop the attacks. And they haven’t offered any compensation for the damage and destruction. In the end, we just want to live in peace, without problems.”

‘Everything works against us’

At a hearing on Tuesday in an Israeli military court, the police investigator stated that only three Jewish suspects — two of whom were apparently injured in Friday’s events — had been taken in for questioning. One is still in detention, while the other two were released (at least one of them to house arrest).

The investigator mentioned that one of the pieces of evidence against the Palestinian detainees was a video showing residents throwing stones while settlers were storming the village. In response, Riham Nassra, the lawyer representing the seven Palestinian detainees, argued that the residents were attacked in their own village and were defending themselves.

The judge, Maj. Gen. Roee Malinger, evidently agreed — likely swayed by the extent of video evidence. “It is difficult to determine definitively, but based on the investigative materials presented to me, there is a real possibility that the suspects acted in self-defense,” he said. The detainees were released today on NIS 5,000 bail.

Still, the residents of Jinba know that it is only a matter of time until they face the next pogrom. Around 60 rural Palestinian villages in the West Bank have been wiped off the map since October 7 as a result of a sharp escalation in state-backed settler violence. Communities in Masafer Yatta, as well as the Jordan Valley, have come under particularly intense strain.

“Their goal is to expel us from this area,” Mohammed said. “We have no security — they want to kill us. Since the war began, it’s been difficult to travel in or out. They even attack us on the road, whether we travel by car or donkey. We are no longer going out to graze our animals.” One of Mohammed’s daughters added: “We are afraid when night falls.”

“We’ve lived here since before the State of Israel was established,” Nuriman Jabarin, another resident, told +972. “I was born in Jinba and have lived here my whole life. I haven’t had a single good day in 55 years. Everything is bitter. Every day, settlers come, or the occupation army, or the Civil Administration. But Friday was a particularly dark day. Everything works against us — on the roads, in our own homes, all across Masafer Yatta. We are asking for protection.”

+972 approached the IDF Spokesperson for comment. Besides confirming that Area Defense personnel took part in the night raid, they referred us to the official military investigation which stated, among other things: “During operations in the village, the forces conducted searches for weapons. Some of these searches took place in sensitive locations, such as schools and a clinic, without the required authorization.

“During the operation, soldiers vandalized and damaged equipment at the site, contrary to orders and procedures, and in a manner inconsistent with the expectations of IDF soldiers during operational activities and with IDF values,” the statement continued. “Additionally, the forces failed to report these irregular actions, which were only discovered through footage that circulated on social media.”

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.