Israeli soldiers detained me for harvesting olives — but that’s not the real outrage

Last week, Israeli soldiers detained me for harvesting olives in a grove near Bethlehem. I was one of about 70 people — rabbis, American and Israeli Jews, and Palestinians — helping Palestinian farmers harvest trees their family has owned for generations. My detention made headlines. But it’s not the story. The story is the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The olive grove we were harvesting as part of the Protect the Harvest effort belongs to families from Nahalin, a Palestinian village south of Bethlehem in the West Bank.

The villagers have not been able to harvest their olives for three years, because of attacks by Israeli settlers. Brad Lander on a bus after he was detained during the olive harvest. In recent weeks across the West Bank, settlers have attacked Palestinian farmers, volunteers, European diplomats and a Washington Post journalist. In our case, though, when security guards from the adjacent settlement of Beitar Illit spotted us, they didn't confront us themselves.

Instead, they called the Israeli army, and soldiers detained us for harvesting olives on private Palestinian land at the invitation of its owners. In other words, we were doing nothing illegal nor anything that required coordination with the Israeli government. Of the 70 folks I was detained alongside, the IDF soldiers held a Palestinian woman from the family who owns the land longest of all. Their message was clear: don’t try to harvest that land again.

What I saw in Nahalin is part of a broader pattern I have seen across the West Bank: settler violence and state power working hand in hand to dispossess Palestinians of their land and expel them from their homes. In Mughayir, the sister village of my Brooklyn synagogue, families once farmed olives and dates and grazed flocks on land stretching down into the Jordan Valley. Today, the village has been stripped of nearly all of it — by a government order that uprooted its olive trees, by a permanently locked gate cutting it off from the main road and by attacks from nearby settler outposts.

One older man was assaulted and pepper sprayed earlier this month by settlers, just for walking into one of his few remaining fields. In Taibe, a shepherd showed me a video of settlers and soldiers raiding his compound at night, beating his family and taking 40 of his sheep on a newly arrived settler's claim that they were his. These are not isolated incidents. A recent report from Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that settler violence, combined with Israeli government policy, has made more than 1 million dunams — roughly 18% of the West Bank — inaccessible to Palestinians, and has displaced over 100 communities.

In Al-Walaja, in eastern Jerusalem, villagers have sought approval of a zoning plan for more than a decade. The Israeli authorities have refused to grant it without explanation — a recurring dynamic in Palestinian communities — only to then cite the missing zoning plan as an excuse to demolish their homes. Half the village is under demolition orders. Residents pay taxes to the Jerusalem municipality. But the main government service they receive is the bulldozer.

Al-Walaja in eastern Jerusalem In the Jordan Valley near Jericho, I saw the ruins of what were, until recently, the Bedouin communities of Mu’arrajat and Ras Ein al-Auja, where hundreds of families lived. After the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, settlers began a campaign of harassment that escalated to an attack on the village elementary school. Residents pleaded to soldiers for protection, and they were told it would be provided — but only during the day.

So one night, settlers — no, let’s call them terrorists — came and burned the homes, one by one. When the pogrom was over, every house was destroyed, and every family gone. The term for that is ethnic cleansing. A young Bedouin woman named Aliya, who lived through it, told me the story. She now lives with her family in a refugee compound without running water. Despite it all, she’s studying remotely for her master’s degree. It should not take the arrest of a U.S. congressional candidate or a group of rabbis to bring attention to her story.

But American media provides little opportunity for Palestinians’ voices to be heard. The West Bank None of the Palestinians I met in the West Bank can vote in this week’s Israeli elections, even though the resulting government controls their lives. I devoutly hope Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party loses, and that a new government will take steps to rein in settler terrorism like this. But neither prospective coalition is promising to stop settlement construction, end ongoing occupation and apartheid or protect the human rights of Palestinians — much less recognize a Palestinian state.

Here in the United States, though, the midterm elections do offer an opportunity to demand change. We are not bystanders to ethnic cleansing in Israel and Palestine: our tax dollars help underwrite it. In Congress, I will work to end U.S. military aid to Israel while it violates international law and Palestinian human rights. I will support the Stop the Settlements bill to ban trade and impose sanctions on companies who build and bankroll the settlements — something U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently announced.

I will support recognition of a Palestinian state as U.S. policy. I will work with a broad coalition of American Jewish and Muslim groups that don’t always agree with one another, but who are committed to ending the occupation. Before I left the West Bank, I spoke with a group of Palestinian high school students at the Talitha Kumi school in Beit Jala. Most speak Arabic, Hebrew, German and excellent English. They experience injustice on a daily basis.

Their families can’t vote, but still they told me about their Model UN. They were glad to learn I’m Jewish, and they thanked me for being there. They want a free Palestine, but they also believe in democracy and want to live peacefully alongside Israelis. Brad Lander with a group of Palestinian high school students at the Talitha Kumi school in Beit Jala. There are, to be sure, many complex issues in resolving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

But don't let anyone tell you these young people are raised on hatred. That they deserve freedom and opportunity any less than your kids or mine. That it is in any way “democratic” that their families can’t vote. That stealing their land is consistent with Jewish values. That it’s a good use of our tax dollars to fund their subordination. Or that we can’t find partners for peace.