Before the Israeli military arrived, Hannah Spiro was helping Palestinian farmers pick olives in the occupied West Bank.
Everyone was chatting and enjoying the beautiful weather, Spiro, a 36-year-old rabbi at Hill Havurah congregation in Washington, recalled.
But later on Wednesday, Spiro and other volunteers — including U.S. House candidate Brad Lander of New York — were detained by the Israel Defense Forces. The military said the group was participating in an “unauthorized” harvest.
“I came because I wanted to make a gesture of peace in this place that I love so much. I love Israel, I love Israelis, and I love Palestinians,” Spiro wrote in a text message to The Washington Post early Friday in Israel while she was awaiting a flight home. “I believe that all of our futures are bound up in one another’s, and small acts of peace and goodwill add up.”
Spiro was among about 90 volunteers who were detained in the village of Nahalin, according to the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights. The volunteers, Israelis and Americans, had come to stand alongside Palestinian farmers harvesting olives with the goal of preventing attacks by Israeli settlers.
Galvanized by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have recently been waging a particularly severe campaign of violence, intimidation and displacement against Palestinian communities.
Last week, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers who were trying to pick olives. They set groves on fire and attacked Heidi Levine, a veteran photographer for The Washington Post who was wearing a protective vest clearly marked “PRESS” on its front and back.
On Wednesday, some time after the military and police came to the orchard, the volunteers left the orchard entirely, Spiro said. They walked to the road to return to their buses, she said, but were prevented from boarding. After a police bus arrived, the foreigners were instructed to get in and were then taken to a nearby station, she said.
“They told us we were being detained because we had entered a closed military zone, disobeyed police orders, and behaved in a way that risked disorder. To be clear, none of that was true,” Spiro wrote.
In a Wednesday statement, the IDF said a group of harvesters and dozens of other people had arrived in an area near Beitar Illit earlier that day “to conduct an unauthorized olive harvest.”
“Harvesting in this area requires a request to be submitted to the relevant authorities in advance of the start of the olive harvest season,” the IDF said. “Due to the security risk posed by conducting an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community,” the IDF said its soldiers and other authorities detained those present.
At the police station, the volunteers put their belongings in trash bags and waited to be processed, Spiro said. Authorities took a mug shot along with prints of her fingers and hands.
Spiro said she wasn’t physically harmed and was released after several hours, around 9 p.m.
D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who goes to Hill Havurah congregation, said that when she learned that Spiro had been detained, her first thought was concern for her rabbi.
“I respect that Rabbi Hannah wanted to go see for herself what was happening in the West Bank,” Silverman said in an interview. “She went to see with her own eyes and listen.”
In Israel, when Spiro was texting with The Washington Post while waiting to fly back to the United States, she said she was grateful to lawmakers who had called for their release.
“Really, I wish the Palestinian olive farmers, who have owned these groves for generations, felt safe and legally supported enough to harvest their own olives without the support of volunteers,” Spiro wrote. “There is enough land for everyone, and we fit better in it when we care for each other, support one another, and keep each other safe.”
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