English → Arabic transcript

75-year-old Abdullah Daraghmeh moans in pain. His breathing is labored, his face bloodied, bruised and swollen, bones broken. His family and multiple eyewitnesses say Israeli settlers stormed into his home in the middle of the night and beat him to a pulp. In his West Bank village of Tayasir, those same settlers have now established an outpost

considered illegal even under Israeli law. Soldiers standing idly by until something else draws their attention. Producer Abir Salman identifies us as journalists before translating the soldiers' commands. So the soldiers just immediately came up and started pointing their weapons directly at us telling everyone to sit down immediately.

Obviously, we're not posing any threat here. The commander comes straight for our camera and within seconds a soldier has just put photojournalist Cyril Theofilus in a chokehold, forcing him to the ground. The soldier who assaulted Theofilus continues to demand he turn off his camera before another smacks my phone.

So as you can see, what we have seen happen in the last 24 hours is that settlers came to this area. They settled that hilltop and now you have a lot of soldiers coming to this area with the Palestinians in this area. They're on top of the home of Imad, the man that we were just speaking to.

We're seeing the soldiers treat the Palestinians in the area as a threat when really what started this problem was obviously the settlers who came in the middle of the night and took over land that's not theirs. The Palestinians here are detained and questioned. Soldiers detain us too and walk us back to our vehicle.

They say they're trying to establish order between settlers and Palestinians. But as the cameras keep rolling, it becomes clear these soldiers are here in service of the settler movement. They also say it's personal. These soldiers tell me they were friends with the 18-year-old settler who authorities say

was killed last week by a Palestinian driver. Palestinians dispute that account. So we're currently detained by the Israeli military. They've told us to sit in our cars and wait. As you can see, one of them is right here.

And you know, what's really quite striking is the fact that so many of these soldiers are clearly manifesting the same kind of settler ideology. This soldier, Nair, makes that crystal clear. Nair is describing the settler playbook and the role Israeli soldiers often play in propping it up.

The Israeli military did not respond to CNN's questions about soldiers' conduct in the West Bank, including our detention. Amid the war with Iran, those efforts are intensifying, with at least four outposts established this week alone. Land often taken with the blood of Palestinians.

I didn't expect this, Abdullah's son says. This is not normal. So just as we're visiting one patient in the hospital from a settler attack, we've just learned that there have been multiple other settler attacks in the area, and one of the patients is at this same hospital.

Twenty-nine-year-old Saqr Salman says a scuffle broke out after settlers came onto his land and one of them clubbed him in the back of the head. When soldiers arrived, he says they arrested him and beat him with the butt of their guns. The soldiers are a protection for the settlers. I would tell the soldiers that they stole my sheep and they would say that I'm lying

and that I'm the one who attacked them, and every time I tried to say something, the soldiers would beat me. Settlers, he says, always go free.