New York congressional candidate Brad Lander says he was detained by IDF in the occupied West Bank

Congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday in a post on X that he was detained in the occupied West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces while participating in an olive harvest. “I’ve been detained by the IDF, along with a group of rabbis & volunteers,” Lander said in the post, sharing a picture of himself on a bus. “We were simply harvesting olives in a grove” in the West Bank, he continued. “The occupation is a crime under international law. Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.” NBC News has reached out to Lander and his campaign for further information and comment. The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lander, a 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 occupied West Bank with the “Protect the Harvest” coalition, which he said was “bringing people together from around the world to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the face of state-sanctioned settler terrorism.” “Our goals for the trip are to help protect the olive harvest — and to shed a light on the reality of the occupation,” he said in a post to X on Monday. Last week saw two high-profile Israeli settler attacks,