Olive harvest season has become a flashpoint in the West Bank in recent years as extremist Israeli settlers regularly threaten and physically harm Palestinian harvesters, but this year, “the situation on the ground is out of control,” Anton Goodman of Rabbis for Human Rights said on the Haaretz Podcast. 

“We have never seen anything like this,” Goodman emphasized, noting that in the past, “We've seen settler attacks, and we've seen unnecessary army aggression and restrictions, but we've never seen such a peak moment of violence affecting so many communities.”

Goodman described the situation as a “perfect storm” with “extremists at the heart of the Israeli government, who have sent clear policy recommendations to the police” to refrain from arresting violent settlers so that “the rule of law is totally diminished.”

He also outlined the ways in which mainstream Religious Zionist institutions and their leaders are complicit – such as when the prominent rabbi Yaakov Medan encouraged his yeshiva students to spend the High Holidays at outposts that are illegal even under Israeli law.

Also on the podcast, Leila Stillman-Utterback recounts her experience as an 18-year-old Jewish American volunteer who was recently arrested at an olive harvest and then deported and banned from Israel for 10 years. While Israel has deported non-Jewish solidarity volunteers for years, Stillman-Utterback’s case is believed to be the first time Israel has deported a Diaspora Jew from the West Bank. 

Speaking from the United States, Stillman-Utterback said a court challenge to banning her entry to Israel is underway. 

Maintaining her connection to Israel, she said, is “incredibly important to me, even though I am extremely frustrated with the actions of the Israeli government, both in terms of the impunity for settler violence and their actions in Gaza.”

Read more:

Erased: Israeli Settlers' Brutal War on Palestinian Communities in the West Bank

IDF Reports Surge in West Bank Settler Attacks Against Palestinians, Says Police and Shin Bet Looking Away Amid Political Pressure

'We May Have Reached the Point Where Settlers Try to Kill Jews'

Analysis | There Will Be No Middle East Peace if Trump Turns a Blind Eye to Wild Settler Violence in the West Bank

Op-ed by Anton Goodman: How Israel's Violent West Bank Settlers Place Minors in the Line of Fire

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.