The Israeli military said it has suspended the Netzah Yehuda battalion after soldiers assaulted a CNN crew while the network was preparing a report on settler violence in the West Bank village of Tayasir, according to an announcement issued March 30. The case marked what the report described as a rare instance of punishment for soldier misconduct. The military said the battalion would resume service only after a process aimed at reinforcing its “professional and ethical foundations.”
In the filmed incident last week, soldiers from the battalion approached the news crew with guns raised and shouted at them, a sequence CNN described as quickly spreading online. CNN correspondent Jeremy Diamond said that a producer was put in a chokehold, and that the soldiers detained the crew for two hours while also echoing settler ideology. Diamond wrote that the soldiers detained the crew along with West Bank Palestinians and said “all the West Bank belongs to Israel” and called Palestinians “terrorists,” according to his report on CNN’s website.
The Israeli military announced Monday that it was suspending the Netzah Yehuda battalion from its current deployment after the footage, which went viral, showed the assault on the CNN team. The statement said the unit would undergo internal steps before resuming service, without indicating when the battalion would return to deployment.
Netzah Yehuda is a unit of ultra-Orthodox soldiers that has previously drawn scrutiny over alleged abuses of Palestinian civilians. The report said the battalion was linked to the death of a 78-year-old Palestinian American man after his detention by the battalion’s forces in 2022. Following an outcry from the U.S. government in that case, the Israeli military called the incident “a grave and unfortunate event,” reprimanded one officer and reassigned two others, and later moved the unit out of the West Bank.
In addition to the CNN assault case, the report described that Israeli authorities said they had launched an investigation into another incident involving Israeli forces during a patrol in the nearby West Bank town of Tammun, where four Palestinians, including two children and one who is blind, were killed. The Israeli authorities had not announced disciplinary measures against officers in that case, and Israeli media reported that the officers have not been questioned.
Rabbi Shaul Abdiel, who works with the Netzah Yehuda unit, criticized the suspension as too swift and too broad. In a radio interview, Abdiel said the punishment was “too fast and too collective.”
Human rights groups have long argued that Israel rarely holds soldiers accountable for Palestinian deaths. The report said the CNN case and the 2022 death of the Palestinian American man appeared to attract extra attention because they involved U.S. citizens and a well-known news organization.