A prominent Israeli rabbi on Friday issued a religious ruling permitting Israeli occupiers to take olives from Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, claiming that harvesting the crop “demonstrates Jewish ownership of the land,” Anadolu reports.
The ruling was issued by Rabbi Dov Lior, one of the most prominent religious authorities among Israeli occupiers in the West Bank, and was published by Israeli Channel 13.
It comes amid escalating occupier violence against Palestinians and their property, particularly farmers during the olive harvest season.
Lior claimed that Palestinians do not own their land, arguing that they had not purchased it from the “people of Israel” or from any Jewish person and describing the land as “stolen property.”
Citing Jewish religious law, he claimed that ownership of land cannot be transferred through theft and that Palestinian land therefore remains the property of the “people of Israel.”
He also argued that Palestinians planting olive trees on their land does not give them ownership rights over either the land or its produce.
Lior claimed Palestinians had already received sufficient compensation for planting the trees by consuming their fruit over previous years, and said both the land and harvest should return to what he called their “rightful owners.”
His ruling was not limited to land near illegal settlements, however, and also permitted occupiers to take olive crops from Palestinian areas farther away.
The ruling comes as attacks on Palestinian farmers during the West Bank olive harvest season have intensified, including assaults, preventing farmers from reaching their land, damaging trees and stealing crops.
Such attacks recur during the olive harvest, which peaks in October each year, while this month has seen an increase in attacks by occupiers against Palestinians and their property.
Palestinian, Israeli and international rights organizations have accused Israeli authorities of failing to stop occupier violence or hold perpetrators accountable despite attacks targeting Palestinians, their homes, farmland, vehicles and other property.
Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land are considered illegal under international law, while Palestinians maintain their rights to their land and reject attempts to seize it.
The settlers attacked Palestinians harvesting olives and beat Heidi Levine, a veteran photojournalist. Witnesses said Israeli soldiers did nothing to halt the violence.
Violence against Palestinians and the press has been on going problem in Israel in general for years, but the level of such incidents in the occupied West Bank has reached a fevered pitch in recent months, with Israeli settlers attacking people with virtual impunity. The latest attack saw Washington Post veteran photojournalist Heidi Levine among […]
Espionage novels portray the spy as a person in a trench coat carrying stolen documents and disappearing into a dark alley. Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, certainly fit that picture. A Navy analyst who stole American secrets including the complete ten-volume manual of the National Security Agency exposing how the US gathers its signal intelligence and the names of thousands of foreign individuals who worked for US spy agencies. Intelligence officials believe Israel shared stolen documents with the Soviet Union. According to several intelligence assessments, Pollard was one of the most damaging spies in US history.
Pollard received a life sentence in 1987 and was released in 2015. At first, Israel claimed he was a rogue, apologised and did not admit he had been its agent until 1998. In 2007, Israel named a square in Jerusalem after him, honouring him for his services.
Pollard was neither the first nor the last Israeli asset. Lawrence Franklin, a Pentagon analyst, pleaded guilty in 2005 to passing classified information to an Israeli embassy official and two AIPAC staffers. Ben-Ami Kadish, a former Army engineer, pleaded guilty in 2008 to passing secret documents to an Israeli consulate official, and served no prison time. Stewart Nozette from NASA was charged with attempted espionage following an FBI sting operation. In 1970, Richard Perle was caught in an FBI wiretap discussing classified information with an Israeli embassy official.
In 2001, the same Perle chaired the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, while two other Israel-firsters, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz held senior posts in the same building. Franklin had worked in Feith’s policy office when he was indicted for espionage. In 1996, a study group led by Perle, and Feith, prepared a policy paper for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu titled “A Clean Break.” It urged Israel to abandon the Oslo Accords and the peace process with the Palestinians, and it proposed removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq as part of a broader Israeli strategy to reshape the region. Five years later, as leaders in the Pentagon, they delivered America’s first made-for-Israel war in Iraq.
The above is in no way intended to insinuate or allege that anyone, least of all these Zionist Americans, has dual loyalties. No. It is so profound, there is only one way to describe it: Israel-first loyalty.
Fast forward to 2026. David Milstein, stepson of Israeli propagandist Mark Levin and a senior aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, effectively the ambassador’s chief of staff. An unabashed Israel-first American Zionist, Milstein oversees the embassy’s West Bank and Gaza portfolio, placing the fox in charge of the henhouse. According to The New York Times, citing a dozen people who have worked with him, Milstein has repeatedly quashed or rewritten embassy reports to the U.S. State Department to favour Netanyahu’s government.
When the Israeli government accelerated the approval of building more Jewish-only colonies in occupied West Bank, embassy staff drafted an urgent memo warning that the move might cross President Trump’s own red line against annexation. According to The Times, the memo never left Jerusalem.
In response to the surge in attacks by Israeli Jewish mobs on Palestinian homes and farms, embassy staff prepared a report documenting Israel’s failure to rein in violence by Zionist youth. Milstein rewrote it and sent an embassy cable to Washington titled “Government Cracks Down on Escalating West Bank Violence.” When US diplomats pointed out that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites were chaotic and deadly, Milstein concluded the operation was a success.
Thirty members of Congress, led by Senator Chris Van Hollen, asked what had become of the investigations into the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli Jewish mobs and soldiers. Embassy staff compiled a report showing little progress and no charges. According to The Times, the report was set aside in favor of a letter saying Israel was handling the cases properly.
Cable traffic from the section covering Palestinian affairs fell from several a week to a few a month, because American embassy staff feared their work would be blocked, rewritten or impact their diplomatic career. Milstein would question embassy staff if they were “pro-Israel” or “pro-Hamas,” not if they were loyal Americans. A diplomatic mission that polices loyalty with questions like that ceases to function as an American embassy.
I once shared a lunch table with an American ambassador serving abroad. He recounted how, during George Shultz’s tenure as Secretary of State, Shultz would meet newly appointed ambassadors, point to a world map in his office, and ask the appointee to identify their country. Most would point to the country where they had been assigned. Shultz would correct them: “No, your country is the United States. Your duty is to serve your own country’s interests, not those of the country to which you are assigned.”
Ambassador Huckabee and Milstein either never heard that lesson, or serving Israel was their priority.
Rather than representing American interests in Jerusalem, the embassy operates as Israel’s envoy within the US government. Turning the US embassy into a Zionist mission run by the evangelical church, and an indoctrinated Zionist whose stepfather is referred to as “Tel Aviv Levin.”
Here again, no one is accusing Huckabee or Milstein of being foreign agents. Frankly, Israel does not need them to be. It need not recruit them or pay them like Pollard. Officials ideologically devoted to Israel can do the same work from within the U.S. government, under legitimate titles and without risking arrest.
No country receives more American financial and military aid than Israel. Yet US counterintelligence assessments have identified Israel as one of the most aggressive intelligence-gathering threats to the American homeland. Jonathan Pollard and others may have been the quintessential trench-coat spies. But the more dangerous risk is not someone stealing classified files; it is Americans whose loyalty to Israel overrides their duty to the U.S., operating in the halls of the White House and the Pentagon with one focus: serve Israel.
Consider David Frum, who coined President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” phrase, helping lay the rhetorical roadmap for America’s longest foreign war.
Frum also wrote speeches for Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, making Israel’s case before the international body. The same writer, serving an Israel-first agenda from two different platforms: first helping sell America a war in the Middle East, then making Israel’s case before the world.
In the 21st century, with Zionist control of mainstream corporate media, and these implants inside America’s halls of power, Israel does not require trench coats, or stolen documents. It operates through officials who occupy positions of power deciding what American policymakers read by shaping diplomatic reporting, suppressing information and steering American decisions in ways that advances Israel’s strategic interests over America’s own. And whenever Israel’s interests and Washington’s information needs diverge, the information bends, delivered in plain sight, through official channels, under official titles, and on the American taxpayer’s payroll.
Film interviewing military insiders about mass killing of civilians in Gaza wins widespread praise around the world
Critics around the world have hailed the award-winning documentary NAZA as a “brilliant and harrowing” film that is “impossible to ignore”.
NAZA, which is produced by the Guardian and details Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, was released in UK cinemas this week and will be shown in more than 50 countries. As well as its global cinema releases, NAZA will be available free on the Guardian’s website from late November.
Settlers hurl rocks at Palestinians and beat photographer Heidi Levine as part of yearly attacks to disrupt harvest
Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in a coordinated movement to disrupt the annual olive harvest, burning cars and trees and injuring Palestinians and a Washington Post photographer.
Masked settlers wielding clubs and other weapons attacked people attempting to harvest their olives in West Bank towns on Friday. Palestinian authorities said they recorded attacks in eight villages, and injuries among at least 20 people.
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