Congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday in a post on X that he was detained in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces while participating in an olive harvest.
“I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers,” Lander said in the post, sharing a picture of himself on a bus.
“We were simply harvesting olives in a grove” in the West Bank, he continued. “The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
NBC News has reached out to Lander and his campaign for further information and comment. The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lander, the former New York City comptroller, is running for Congress in New York’s 10th Congressional District, a deep blue Democratic stronghold. He previously posted that he was visiting the West Bank with the “Protect the Harvest” coalition, which he said was “bringing people together from around the world to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism.”
“Our goals for the trip are to help protect the olive harvest — and to shed a light on the reality of the occupation,” he said in a post to X on Monday.
Last week saw two high-profile Israeli settler attacks, including one in which Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was injured, and another that targeted European diplomats. Earlier this week, Israeli police said they arrested 10 people suspected of participating in the violence against Palestinians and others.
More than 900 Palestinians were injured in settler attacks since the start of the year, according to a United Nations report from July. The same report said that 76 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed by Israeli forces or settlers or died from their injuries since the start of the year.
Lander ousted incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th district primary, which was was dominated by the candidates’ views toward Israel. Both men are Jewish, and Lander has been more critical of Israel’s government and the war in Gaza, which he has said was a “genocide.”