(Oct. 21, 2026 / JNS)
Brad Lander, Democratic nominee for a congressional seat in New York considered to be safe, was detained and then released on Wednesday after he said that he joined an olive harvest in Judea and Samaria.
The Israel Defense Forces told JNS that Lander, a former New York City comptroller, had not coordinated the trip with Israeli authorities.
Lander, who has accused Israel of “genocide” and who is Jewish, stated that the Israeli military detained him and “a group of rabbis and volunteers.”
“We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank,” he said, writing a term that some use for Judea and Samaria.
“The occupation is a crime under international law,” Lander stated. “Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
After losing to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Lander endorsed Mamdani, and the mayor—who Jewish leaders have said is endangering Jews with his anti-Israel rhetoric—has backed Lander, who is one of his highest-profile Jewish supporters.
An Israeli military official told JNS that Palestinians did not submit a request to coordinate harvesting on the plot, which is near Beitar Illit. “It does not appear on the area’s coordination maps,” the official told JNS.
Lander was “released once the matter was brought to our attention,” the official said.
“The plot in question requires only a small number of harvesters to collect its produce,” the official told JNS. “The security establishment views the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.”
Mamdani, who again accused Israel of “genocide” in his statement for the third anniversary of Oct. 7, weighed in on the incident.
“Today, Brad Lander, rabbis, and other New Yorkers accompanied Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest. For that, they were detained by the Israeli government,” the mayor said. “Harvesting olives is not illegal. The occupation is.”
“I am thankful that Brad has been released. But other New Yorkers remain detained, and they must be released immediately,” he said. “The same Israeli government detaining them has committed a horrific genocide against Palestinians, killing more than 74,000 people over the last few years alone.”
About 80 Israeli and foreign left-wing activists were detained between Nahalin and Beitar Illit, in Gush Etzion, according to Kan News reporter Haim Goldich.
The activists said that they were told they had violated a closed military zone order, of which they said they had been unaware, Goldich wrote on social media.
At 2 p.m. in Israel, Lander was the only one released “after it became known that he is a congressional candidate,” Goldich wrote.
“The rest at the Gush Etzion station will be investigated on suspicion of offenses of conduct that may disrupt public order, violation of a closed military zone order and additional offenses,” he wrote.
Yehoshua Schoffman, a former Israeli deputy attorney general who was among those detained, wrote that police and soldiers arrived after about two-and-a-half hours of harvesting.
“We were asked to stop, and everyone complied,” he stated in Hebrew. “There was no friction whatsoever with settlers or with the security forces.”
“The Americans were loaded onto one bus and the Israelis onto minibuses,” he said.
The annual olive harvest in Judea and Samaria generally takes place in October and November. Harvesting in the area where the group was detained requires a request to authorities before the season begins, according to the Israeli military.
“This coordination is necessary to ensure the security of the area and maintain public order,” the military stated.
Soldiers and police officers, including from the border police, detained the group due to “the security risk posed by conducting an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community,” the IDF said.
The landowner was given contact information to arrange a harvest at a later date, according to the military.
About 100 coordinated harvests have taken place across Judea and Samaria this season, yielding “many dozens of tons of produce” without unusual incidents, the IDF stated. “In areas designated for coordinated harvesting, only harvesters will be permitted to enter, solely for the purpose of harvesting.”
Earlier this week, Lander said that he was visiting with the “Protect the Harvest” coalition 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 wrote.
He called for “a sustained commitment to protecting Palestinian communities from settler violence, forced displacement and the ongoing threats to their right to remain on their land” and “human rights, safety, equality and freedom for both Palestinians and Israelis.”
“Thankfully, our corner of today’s harvest was peaceful and successful, but violence unfortunately is never far away,” he wrote at the time.
Naomi Linder Kahn, director of the international division at Regavim, an Israeli organization that focuses on land-use issues, told JNS before the news about Lander broke that some foreign-funded groups use the olive harvest to provoke confrontations.
“They provide them with cameras. They teach them how to provoke a confrontation,” she said. “They have whole NGOs that they create so that they can fund them, just so they can create these provocations.”
The harvest “is the big thing every year” and “gets bigger every year,” according to Linder Kahn.
“I could count probably 15 NGOs that are devoted solely to the Palestinian Arab olive harvest,” she told JNS. “The thing you’ll hear over and over is that ‘this is such a major part of the Palestinian economy.’ That’s B.S.”
“It’s a very nice pastoral kind of myth,” she said.
Linder Kahn told JNS that the groups receive funding from the European Union, foreign governments and European church groups and that their support includes training activists to generate publicity and confrontations.
“I remind you that in Europe, the church groups are actually funded by the government,” she said. “This is another way to funnel government money without leaving too much of a paper trail.”
The NGOs do not give activists buckets for harvesting olives, according to Linder Kahn.
“What they give them is video cameras, and they give them lessons in social media, and they give them lessons in how to provoke a confrontation, how to present yourself when you’re trying to get into Israel, to misrepresent what you’re coming for and where you’re going to be,” she said.
It is “a very, very well-oiled machine,” according to Linder Kahn.
“On the other end of this machine are people who are eager to believe it,” she told JNS. “They want this narrative because this is their best weapon.”
At 4:35 p.m., Lander wrote on social media that he had been “released from IDF custody with a ‘warning,’ apparently because of my public profile.”
“I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee,” he wrote. “But several dozen rabbis and participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention. For harvesting olives. They should all be released immediately.”
He said the incident was “yet one more element of escalating and very clearly state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”