US congressional candidate detained by Israeli authorities in West Bank
Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for the US Congress, has been detained by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
American and Israeli rights groups said he was among 90 volunteers held by Israeli authorities on Wednesday.
Lander, an ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is the Democratic party’s nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district for the US House of Representatives in the November 3 midterm elections. The former New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate is a Jewish American who has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.
Writing later on X, Lander said he had been detained along with a group of rabbis and volunteers.
“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,” he said.
Rabbis for Human Rights, an Israeli organization, said in a statement that Lander and other volunteers had been accompanying Palestinian farmers harvesting olives close to a village near Bethlehem when Israeli forces arrived and detained the group.
The organization said Israeli forces arrived around two hours after the harvest began and told the volunteers the area was a closed military zone. Rabbis for Human Rights said the group could not have known this in advance.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the chief executive of American rights organization T’ruah, was among those detained. She told Reuters the group had volunteered to leave the area but was instead put on buses by Israeli forces and taken to a police station.
“We were obviously not doing anything violent but just the very act of picking olives together with Palestinian farmers was apparently disturbing for some,” said Jacobs, a 51 year-old conservative rabbi from Manhattan in New York City.
She said the group had been picking olives “very peacefully” with Palestinian farmers before Israeli forces arrived.
Jacobs said the group was placed on two buses before being taken to a police station.
Speaking by phone, she said some of those detained have been taken inside the police station, while others like Jacobs were being held on a bus outside the station.
As far as she knew, the police had not made any formal accusations against the group, Jacob said.
She said it was not clear to them why they were detained or if they would be charged.
