A photo of an armed Israeli soldier, surrounded by dozens of his fellow soldiers, standing on the back of a Palestinian man as he lie face down in the ground went viral on Palestinian social media this week.

The photo was taken in the midst of a brutal Israeli crackdown on activists as they attempted to escort a group of Palestinian farmers to their land in order to harvest their olive trees in the al-Ras area west of Salfit, in the northern occupied West Bank.

Every year Palestinian farmers experience violence during the olive harvest. This year for Sukkot, Ilana Cruger-Zaken is inviting others to join her in supporting their resilience.

You can’t food-wash apartheid. Naming a Philadelphia food truck “Moshava” after a colonial tradition is appropriate considering that its supposed Israeli menu is predominantly Arab food, appropriated by Israel much the same as they’ve appropriated Palestinian lands, home, and heritage. There is nothing Israeli about shawarma, hummus, falafel, or arayes, all of which predate the state of Israel by a few dozen centuries.

In this episode of the Mondoweiss Podcast, Yumna Patel discusses her visit with Palestinian farmers who were attacked by Israeli settlers, and Michael Arria talks about the outcome of the 2020 election.

The Israeli settlers in the Nablus district are notoriously violent, and are routinely recorded as attacking Palestinians and their property year round. But once the olive harvest comes around every year, settlers typically focus their attacks onto Palestinian farmers and their olive trees.

For many Palestinians, the olive harvest isn’t just about picking olive it’s symbolic of their culture, their tradition, and the Palestinian ties to this land.

“If you’re looking for a key sign of what occupation is about, it’s what’s happening in the olive groves,” human rights monitor Ghassan Daghlas tells Mondoweiss.

Rada Daniell reports from an IWPS trip to Palestine during the last olive harvest, “Every year there is another line of catalog-style settlement buildings spilled over the hills, another patch of land cleared out.” International volunteers help Palestinians under occupation harvest olives, then go home to break a de facto information embargo on the reality in Palestine.

Every year, without fail, Palestinians mark the beginning of autumn with the olive harvest. A sacred cultural event, families from across the country leave their towns and cities and head for their olive groves, passed down to them from the generations before.

And every year, without fail, much of the harvest is characterized by attacks on Palestinian farmers and families by Israeli settlers and armed soldiers. This year is no different.

Israeli authorities only give the residents of Turmusayya, a lush Palestinian village nestled in a valley between Ramallah and Nablus, two days in the fall to harvest their olives. When time finally came this year they were devastated to find dozens of trees chopped down, uprooted, and rotting. “Some of these trees are 40, 50, 60, and 70 years old,” 78-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud al-Araj told Mondoweiss, “I have been cultivating these trees, this land, since I was a boy.” Pointing to the illegal Israeli outpost of Adei Ad, which was built on lands of Turmusayya, al-Araj’s voice intensified. “We give everything we have to our land and to these trees, and then the settlers come and destroy it all.”