Congressional candidate Brad Lander posted on X on Wednesday that he was detained by the Israel Defense Forces while participating in an olive harvest in the West Bank.
“I was detained by the Israel Defense Forces along with a group of rabbis and volunteers,” Rand posted, sharing a photo of herself on a bus.
“We were just harvesting olives in a grove in the West Bank,” he continued. “Occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law that I know of.”
NBC News has reached out to Rand and his campaign for additional information and comment. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rand, the former New York City comptroller, is running for Congress in New York’s 10th Congressional District, a deep blue Democratic stronghold. He previously posted that he was visiting the West Bank with the Protect the Harvest coalition, which he said “brings people together from around the world to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism.”
“The goal of our trip is to help protect the olive harvest and shine a light on the reality of the occupation,” he said in a post to X on Monday.
Last week saw two high-profile attacks by Israeli settlers, one injuring Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine and another targeting European diplomats. Earlier this week, Israeli police said they had arrested 10 people suspected of participating in violence against Palestinians and others.
According to a United Nations report in July, more than 900 Palestinians have been injured in settler attacks since the beginning of this year. The same report said 76 Palestinians have been killed or wounded in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the beginning of the year.
Lander ousted incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in a District 10 primary that focused on the candidates’ views on Israel. Both men were Jewish, with Rand taking a more critical view of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza, which he called a “genocide.”