{"id":378940,"date":"2026-10-21T22:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378940\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T22:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:26:17","slug":"brad-lander-says-hes-released-after-israeli-forces-detained-him-during-olive-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378940\/","title":{"rendered":"Brad Lander says he’s released after Israeli forces detained him during olive harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller and current Democratic nominee for the state\u2019s 10th Congressional District, said Wednesday he\u2019d been detained by the Israel Defense Forces<\/a> while he was helping Palestinian farmers pick olives in the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n

He announced he’d been released just before 10 a.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n

In a post on X, Lander said Israeli forces had detained him along with a group of rabbis and volunteers who had been harvesting olives near the village of Nahalin, outside Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn\u2019t a crime under any law I know,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In a follow-up post three hours later, Lander said he was released with a warning \u201capparently because of my public profile.\u201d He added that several dozen other participants were still being detained and \u201cshould all be released immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli Foreign Ministry called Lander\u2019s participation in the harvest a \u201ccalculated political provocation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLander traveled to a foreign country, deliberately entered a restricted security area, and participated in an unauthorized activity without the required coordination,\u201d the ministry wrote on X. \u201cBrad Lander came looking for a confrontation. Now he is pretending to be its victim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbis for Human Rights was among the groups that helped organize the olive harvest. Acting Director Anton Goodman said he was detained alongside Lander Wednesday morning. He spoke to Gothamist by phone and said he was still being held at an Israeli police station in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

Goodman said the group of about 70 Israeli and international volunteers arrived Wednesday morning to work in Nahalin, a Palestinian village southwest of Bethlehem. They hoped to harvest olive groves that Palestinian farmers hadn\u2019t been able to access for three years, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pastoral area,\u201d Goodman said. \u201cIt’s beautiful. It’s ancient terracing. And on each level of the terraces are groups of olive trees that are owned by different families from the village.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area where they were working was a few hundred meters from an Israeli settlement, Goodman said. The volunteers went plot by plot, bagging olives to take back to the village. Only a small number of Palestinians joined them because, Goodman said. \u201cThe majority were scared to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

After about an hour-and-a-half, he said, a large group of \u201cIsraeli security forces, police, army\u201d approached the group and said the area had been designated a closed military zone that morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said to them, \u2018We will respect it and we will leave.\u2019 And they said, \u2018No, we\u2019re going to detain you all,\u2019\u201d Goodman said.<\/p>\n

Goodman, who described himself as an Orthodox Jew, said about 15 rabbis from across denominations were in the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work that we were doing is a work of Jewish identity as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on X that he was thankful Lander had been released but that other New Yorkers remained detained and \u201cmust be released immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHarvesting olives is not illegal,\u201d Mamdani wrote. \u201cThe occupation is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lander had announced earlier in the week<\/a> that he was in the West Bank with the \u201cProtect the Harvest\u201d coalition. He said the group was helping Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the face of \u201cstate-sanctioned settler terrorism\u201d and drawing attention to the occupation.<\/p>\n

The trip comes as settler attacks during this year\u2019s harvest have drawn international condemnation. Last week, settlers attacked a Washington Post photojournalist<\/a>, and the following day they attacked a delegation of European diplomats<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lander, a close ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, unseated Rep. Dan Goldman in the June Democratic primary. Israel was a major issue on the campaign trail. Lander has accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

This story has been updated with additional information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller and current Democratic nominee for the state\u2019s 10th Congressional District,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-378940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}