See more of our coverage in your search results.
As anyone who has ever harvested olives will tell you, the activity is a fun fall tradition.
It requires a few people with functioning arms, sometimes a rake to reach the tallest branches, and a blanket or tarp to catch the fruit when it falls.
It does not require reporters, activists or Brad Lander.
And yet, there he was, the lefty House nominee in New York’s 10th Congressional District, wearing a Knicks hat and a big-boy expression, sharing on social media that he’s been detained by the IDF after attempting to assist in a Palestinian olive harvest in Judea and Samaria.
“The occupation is a crime under international law,” Lander opined — international law, of course, being precisely the sort of stuff for which we turn to New York City’s former comptroller.
“Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
Even without challenging Lander’s baseless ululations about “the occupation,” it’s easy enough to dismiss his sermonizing about agricultural practices 5,700 miles from the district he aspires to represent.
Search for “olive harvest” in Arabic, and it won’t be too hard to find videos, like the one released earlier this week by Hamas-affiliated media, showing hundreds of young terrorists flocking to the fields, carrying the sort of tools — knives, guns, throwing slings loaded with rocks — that have nothing to do with cultivating Kalamatas or Manzanillas.
Their method is simple: Use the harvest as an excuse to riot; attack Jewish farmers on nearby lands; and then, when the Jews retaliate, make sure you have a throng of sympathetic international observers nearby to document the crimes of Israel’s Very Violent Settlers.
If you’re lucky, some hot-headed 23-year-old Israeli may even respond with excessive force, in which case you can run to the nearest camera and cry again about the unspeakable cruelty of those evil Jews.
It’s a coordinated campaign, pitting Palestinian terrorists, European NGOs and American idiots like Lander against a gaggle of young Israelis trying to farm in peace in a very tough neighborhood.
And it generates, again and again, the desired results, because the despotic Palestinian Authority and its Holocaust-denying chief, Mahmoud Abbas, are dedicated to no other cause than demonizing their Jewish neighbors by any means necessary.
To attempt to bring some order to this chaos, the IDF came up with a very simple solution: If you’re a Palestinian who wishes to harvest his olives, all you have to do is inform the IDF and receive a permit.
That’s a practice anyone who has ever gone fishing or hunting upstate, say, will understand right away: Permits are necessary to make sure everything proceeds in an orderly fashion, especially if you’re trying to farm in one of the world’s most heated war zones.
According to the IDF, this season alone approximately 100 such coordinated harvests have already occurred throughout Judea and Samaria without incident.
The Brad Brigade, however, couldn’t be bothered by such commonsense regulations.
They swooped in — a handful of actual harvesters accompanied by dozens of schmucks there solely to mug for the camera — without bothering to let anyone know.
They were briefly detained, and the landowner, according to the IDF, “was informed that he must coordinate the olive harvest on his plot of land and was provided with the relevant contact information to arrange a harvest at a later date.”
It should be noted that the IDF then committed what may very well be its first actual crime against humanity on record: It let Brad Lander go.
But Lander, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s ball boy who broke hard left in a desperate bid for electoral relevance, got what he came for anyway.
These days, progressive politicians no longer kiss babies or share a cup of coffee with voters in their local neighborhood diner as they campaign.
Instead they travel halfway across the world to show everyone their true passion is Palestine, not America.
And indeed, after his release, Lander sounded much more like he’s running for a seat in the Palestinian Legislative Council than in any American body.
“These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads and live in their homes,” Lander roared on social media.
“Yet one more element of escalating, and very clearly state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”
Consider yourself ethnically cleansed, then, next time you have to ask New York state for a permit before angling for trout.
And consider your choices before casting a vote for Lander next month: Preening performers seeking attention at any cost belong on Broadway, not representing us in Congress.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.