"“By the time I saw them they were already on me,” he told The Times. “They started kicking and beating me. I couldn’t protect myself, there were about 25 of them.” Beatings of Palestinians by radical religious settlers, protected by the Israeli army and police, are a common occurrence in this dangerous city, where Jewish settlements nudge into the heart of a community of about 120,000 Arabs. What happened next was shocking even by the violent standards of Hebron however."