Hardline Israeli rabbi ruling on stolen Palestinian olives prompts uproar

Prominent Israeli Rabbi Dov Lior issued a Jewish religious ruling on Friday permitting settlers to steal olives from Palestinian orchards in the occupied West Bank. Lior’s ruling claims that Palestinian landowners who could not access their olives during the harvest season due to Israeli restrictions have been sufficiently compensated in the years they had access to the fruit. According to the ruling, Jews are permitted to pick these olives to claim ownership of the Palestinian land. Lior, born in Poland in 1933, went as far as classifying the theft of olives from Palestinian farms as an “additional virtue”, as settler pogroms and Israeli occupation continue in the West Bank.