Here’s why I believe that the attack on NBC reporters (@NBCnews) in Jalud was staged, or that the attackers were not “Israeli settlers.” The attack occurred around the same time—Shabbat, August 29, around noon to early afternoon—as the incident at nearby Qusra. The Qusra story circulating internationally is that settlers attacked and occupied a Palestinian house. However, the narrative of a “siege” of this house had already been pushed for weeks by foreign agitators such as Andrey X (@the_andrey_x), a flamboyant media personality who was physically involved at the site and regularly attempts to turn confrontations with Israelis into international media spectacles. The house is associated with the Palestinian-American Abu Rida family. Abu Rida normally lives in the United States, while relatives had been staying at the house during the confrontation. Israeli accounts describe it as largely unoccupied and used as a base for attacks and confrontations with the nearby Tel Talpiot outpost. Abu Rida’s American citizenship also became central to the campaign around the house, allowing the dispute to be framed internationally as a story about American citizens threatened by Israeli settlers. According to the Israeli account, the Qusra incident began when a masked Arab mob attacked Israelis near Tel Talpiot. Images show masked Arabs accompanied by foreign journalists, including footage of Arabs throwing stones while journalists stood behind them filming. This supports the claim that the confrontation was intended to produce images of Israeli aggression. At around the same time in neighboring Jalud, NBC was interviewing Aida al-Toubasi, whose family had been making a very similar claim that settlers had “besieged” their property. The Toubasi and Qusra cases had already been linked in Palestinian media, and the two properties are very close to each other. Bashar al-Qaryouti, a longstanding “anti-settlement resistance activist” who had photographed the Toubasi property for Al Jazeera, was one of the first people to identify the masked attackers in Jalud as “settlers.” The NBC footage itself shows masked men driving directly up to a plainly visible professional camera crew, attacking them, and leaving. NBC offers no evidence that they were Israeli settlers beyond an Israeli license plate, which tells us almost nothing about who was inside the car. Masked Arab men were operating in the same immediate area at essentially the same time. If the Israelis at Tel Talpiot believed Palestinians were staging a confrontation for foreign journalists, why would they drive up to another visible camera crew nearby and provide exactly the spectacle of “settler violence” they believed was being manufactured against them? In addition, religious Jews do not usually drive on Shabbat. Given the pre-existing connection between the two “siege” stories, the presence of masked Arabs with foreign journalists at Qusra, and the complete lack of evidence identifying the masked Jalud attackers as settlers, it seems probable that the two events were coordinated. The attack on the NBC crew was part of an international media stunt.