Israeli forces detained approximately 90 Israeli and international volunteers, among them rabbis and New York congressional nominee Brad Lander, as they accompanied Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest near Bethlehem. The volunteers have now been released. Members of the Progressive Israel Network released the following statement:
These detentions are part of the Israeli government’s system that works to make it impossible or nearly-impossible for Palestinians to stay on their land: to farm it, to make a living from it, to simply live on it. This system includes enabling settler violence, plunder, and settlement expansion. The volunteers who were detained yesterday went to the olive groves outside Nahalin because, without the “protective presence” of outsiders, Palestinian farmers face that system alone. The farmers in question were returning to their land for the first time since October 7, 2023. The volunteers were there because they, in the words of Rabbi Joshua Heschel, were “praying with their feet”—standing up for human rights, equality and dignity.
Just last weekend, settlers attacked Palestinian farmers, journalists and European diplomats. But few of these violent attackers are ever arrested or charged. And, in this case, the opposite happened: Israeli forces detained the people who came to stand peacefully beside the farmers. When the government shields the attackers and detains the witnesses, it is clear whose presence on the land it is protecting.
So many American Jews are horrified by what is happening in the West Bank. We did not commit ourselves to Israel to watch, in the name of the Jewish people, olive groves torched, villages terrorized and peaceful volunteers—many of them Jewish—put on an armored bus and held in Israeli police stations. The Israeli government’s choices have continued to make Israel less safe, and continue to run counter to the values of American Jews.
We call on our American Jewish institutions, including our federations, synagogue movements and communal organizations—as the joint denominational statement did—to stand up for those values and to do so publicly and demand an end to state-backed settler violence and ethnic cleansing. Silence now is a choice. Stand with the Palestinian farmers who ask only to harvest their land in peace. Stand with the Israelis and Jews from around the world who stand beside them. And stand for the Israel promised in its own Declaration of Independence: one of freedom, justice and equality for all its inhabitants.
New Israel Fund
New Jewish Narrative
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
New York Jewish Agenda
Smol Emuni US
Partners for Progressive Israel
J Street
Reconstructing Judaism
Hashomer Hatzair
