The Democratic House nominee says he was held by the Israeli military while helping with an olive harvest. Israel says he entered a restricted area without coordination. Lander disputes this and says he was released after about three hours.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has criticised Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for a New York House seat, after he said he was detained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday while taking part in an olive harvest in the West Bank. Mr Lander, a former New York City comptroller, filmed himself on a bus saying he had been held with a group of rabbis and volunteers. The ministry said on X that the episode “was not about harvesting olives” but “about harvesting headlines”. Mr Lander’s account of the advice he was given differs from Israel’s.
What the Foreign Ministry said
In its post, the ministry said: “This was not about harvesting olives. It was about harvesting headlines. Brad Lander’s latest stunt is nothing more than a calculated political provocation.”
The official Israeli government account added that Mr Lander “traveled to a foreign country, deliberately entered a restricted security area, and participated in an unauthorized activity without the required coordination”. It said: “Brad Lander came looking for a confrontation. Now he is pretending to be its victim.” It also said his team had been informed of the proper procedures but had not co-ordinated with the authorities.
A spokesperson for Mr Lander did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ministry’s posts.
Lander’s account and the dispute over warnings
According to Reuters, Mr Lander said he was released with a warning after about three hours, including time spent at the olive grove. He said other volunteers were held for about nine hours. Israeli police confirmed they released him after discovering he was a US congressional candidate. He suggested that his public profile had helped secure his release, and criticised the longer detention of others.
The ministry says his representatives were told before his arrival that co-ordination with Israeli authorities was necessary. Mr Lander says the Israeli embassy in Washington recommended co-ordinating with local authorities but did not say it was mandatory. He also says he had taken part in the harvest without incident on the previous two days. The correspondence has not been independently published, so the two accounts cannot be checked.
Questions over the map
The Times of Israel examined maps published by the Civil Administration, the Israeli military body that governs civilian matters in the West Bank. It reported that the area where the volunteers were detained was not marked as requiring prior military co-ordination for agricultural access. The Israeli military then said the area had not been marked because Palestinian farmers had never asked for permission to harvest there. It said it had given the landowners contact details for arranging future visits. Rabbis for Human Rights says the farmers had been unable to reach the groves near Nahalin for about three years.
Who else was held
According to Reuters, Israeli police confirmed that 72 people had been released, some on conditions that they stay away from the harvest area. Four foreign nationals are due at deportation hearings on Thursday 22 October. The hearings concern possible removal, and it has not been established that anyone will be deported.
Estimates of the number initially detained range from about 80 to 90, and the volunteers included Israeli, American, British and Canadian citizens. NPR spoke to two Israeli lawyers experienced in such cases, who called it the largest mass detention of activists in the occupied West Bank in at least a decade. Those held included:
- Yehoshua Schoffman, a former deputy attorney general of Israel. He told the Guardian the volunteers stopped harvesting and left when soldiers told them to, and that there had been no confrontation with settlers or security personnel beforehand.
- Rabbi Jill Jacobs, chief executive of the American Jewish human rights group T’ruah. She told Reuters the volunteers had been peacefully picking olives with Palestinian families before security forces arrived. Reports named 11 other American rabbis affiliated with the group.
The operation involved Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organisation that accompanies Palestinian farmers during the harvest, and the volunteers were with a Palestinian family on its privately owned land. Palestinians interviewed by NPR described difficulties harvesting their trees since October 2023 because of violence and security concerns.
Review and wider context
Israeli police said they were reviewing the incident with the military, the Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry and other bodies, to prevent future confrontations with international consequences. That does not mean a formal inquiry into the officers’ conduct has opened.
The detention came days after other incidents in the West Bank. The American photojournalist Heidi Levine was seriously injured in an attack by masked settlers while reporting on the harvest near Abu Falah, and European diplomats and Catholic figures were targeted near Taybeh. Israeli police announced ten arrests linked to recent settler violence, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for action to curb such attacks. There is no evidence these cases are linked to Mr Lander’s detention.
Mr Lander’s campaign
Mr Lander beat Rep. Dan Goldman in the June Democratic primary and is heavily favoured to win the district, which covers lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. The source describes him as an ally of Zohran Mamdani. It says he has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and made Israel a focus of his campaign.
