Brad Lander joined Palestinian farmers and volunteers in an olive grove near Nehalim in the occupied West Bank on 21 October 2026, hoping to help bring in the harvest. About two hours later, Israeli military and police forces arrived, declared the area a closed military zone and detained the group.
Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district, was among approximately 90 volunteers held by Israeli authorities on Wednesday. The group included 80 members of Rabbis for Human Rights, U.S. activists, 33 U.S. citizens and British and Canadian nationals.
The volunteers said they offered to leave when the forces arrived. They were instead put on buses and taken to a police station. Some detainees were brought inside, while others remained on buses outside.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a 51-year-old conservative rabbi from Manhattan, was among those held on a bus outside the station. She did not initially know whether police had made formal accusations against the group.
As of the time of reporting, police had made no formal accusations against the detainees. Rabbis for Human Rights said the volunteers could not have known beforehand that the grove had been designated a closed military zone.
Lander posted on X on Wednesday: 'I've been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers'.
He later wrote: 'We were simply harvesting olives in a grove near Nehalim in the West Bank. The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn't a crime under any law I know'.
Lander is a Jewish American, a former New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, and a critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, which he has called a 'genocide'. He defeated the incumbent Representative Dan Goldman in the primary and is running for the US House of Representatives, with elections scheduled for November 3.
Earlier in the week, Lander said he had travelled to the West Bank to protect the olive harvest and draw attention to the reality of the occupation. The visit was organised with Rabbis for Human Rights and other activists through the Protect the Harvest coalition, which sought to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives amid settler violence.
Rabbis for Human Rights is an Israeli organisation that has helped Palestinian farmers reach land that had been out of their reach since Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack. A UN report from July said more than 900 Palestinians had been injured in settler attacks since the start of the year.
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