Hardline Israeli Rabbi's Ruling on Stealing Palestinian Olives Sparks Outrage and Debate

Prominent Israeli Rabbi Dov Lior has issued a controversial religious ruling that permits Jewish settlers to steal olives from Palestinian orchards in the occupied West Bank. The ruling, issued on Friday, asserts that Palestinian landowners, who are often prevented from accessing their crops due to Israeli restrictions, have been adequately compensated by past access to their fruit. According to Lior's decree, Jews are then permitted to harvest these olives, thereby claiming ownership of the Palestinian land.

Rabbi Lior, born in Poland in 1933, went further by classifying the theft of olives from Palestinian farms as an "additional virtue." This ruling comes amidst ongoing settler pogroms and the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. He encouraged settlers to "conquer the land" beyond existing Jewish communities to publicly "demonstrate our ownership" and adhere to biblical commandments. The ruling stated, "The Jewish people have never given up on the Land of Israel, as we express in our prayers every single day. The Arabs never purchased the land from the Jewish people or from any individual Jew, and therefore it is stolen land in their hands… They never bought it in any way and it remained under the ownership of the Jewish people."

This religious decree coincides with a surge in settler violence against Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season. On Friday alone, at least 19 individuals were injured in 34 separate attacks by the Israeli military and settlers targeting Palestinians harvesting their crops across the West Bank. An American photojournalist working for The Washington Post was reportedly assaulted by settlers while documenting the violence, and five vehicles were set ablaze. Many Palestinian farmers face significant challenges in accessing their crops due to Israeli restrictions and the pervasive threat of settler violence.

While settler pogroms are a recurring issue, their intensification weeks before Israeli elections highlights a push by far-right parties to garner support from the settler community. However, not all Jewish religious leaders have endorsed Rabbi Dov Lior's call to steal Palestinian olives. Rabbis from the religious council of the Gush Etzion settlements published a letter denouncing the illegal harvesting of Palestinian crops as theft, blasphemy, and a moral failing. Tzohar, an organization representing 800 Orthodox rabbis, issued a statement asserting that only the state possesses the authority to confiscate property and that as long as the state recognizes Arab ownership of the olives, they rightfully belong to them.

Mamoun Abu Amer, an analyst of Israeli politics, suggested that political motivations might underlie the rejection of Rabbi Dov Lior's comments by some religious groups. He posited that the dissenting rabbis' stance could be a strategic move, possibly influenced by pressure from within the government, to project an image of these voices as isolated and not representative of broader settler opinion. "The Israeli government is trying to portray that those who carry out these riots are a limited-number group that does not represent public opinion in the settlements, and that the settlers are peaceful, good, and law-abiding, and that the issue is confined to the ‘Hilltop Youth‘ boys who commit these crimes," Abu Amer explained.

Rabbi Dov Lior wields considerable influence among hardline settler factions, including the Hilltop Youth, who strongly support his stringent religious decrees that oppose any territorial compromise with Palestinians. He is also a significant figure within Israel’s Religious Zionist movement and serves as the spiritual mentor for the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Abu Amer noted that Ben-Gvir often relies on Rabbi Dov Lior's religious rulings, which are rooted in biblical texts and the Book of Deuteronomy, and that Rabbi Lior interprets Jewish religious texts in the most extreme manner. "There is an important matter, which is that Ben-Gvir competes via the TikTok platform, propaganda, and populist rhetoric, and this is a rhetoric that serves him and brings him votes, given the environment and general atmosphere in Israel after the events of October 7, as there is a ‘market for extremism’ in the Israeli society," Abu Amer added.

Knesset member Gilad Kariv of the left-wing Democrats Party criticized Lior, accusing him and his supporters of leading Israel toward moral decay. "Whoever stands on the sidelines in this issue joins the camp of Rabbi Dov Lior and his criminals," Kariv stated.