"Five of them threw rocks at me then surrounded me and beat me with metal rods. They injured my head. I said, 'leave me alone. I'm eighty years old.' They said, 'No,' " said Rabbi Moshe Yehudai of Rabbis for Human Rights – an organization formed in 1988 to "inform the Israeli public about human rights violations".

The five are Jewish settlers who attacked Rabbi Yehudai while he was picking olives alongside Palestinian farmers in the West Bank. The settlers also broke the rabbi's arm. 

The Rabbis & Palestinian olive harvest

That aggression happens every Fall; Jewish settlers living near Palestinian olive groves swoop down, physically attack farmers, torch trees and drive Palestinians away.

Israeli soldiers serving in the area have orders not to intervene unless settlers are attacked or counter-attacked by Palestinians, so the organization Rabbis for Human Rights has been picking alongside farmers for 17 years. 

They serve as human shields – deterrents to violent settler attacks. In some cases, their presence triggers the ire of angry settlers.

Land claims and history

Jewish settlers living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank justify land claims by referencing biblical texts citing Jewish ownership to "the Promised Land" covering the land tract from the "river of Egypt to the Euphrates".

Subsequently, violent campaigns to push Palestinians off those lands are sometimes referred to by the ultra-right as a "birthright".

Census figures cite there are 200 Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, which are populated by an estimated 650,000 settlers. Israel's settlement has grown by nearly six percent during the past decade.

Around 3,000,000 Palestinians live in the West Bank – 100,000 depend on income from the annual harvest - an estimated 12 million U.S. dollars.

Israel property laws dictate that Palestinians who don't live on or harvest land for varying tracts of time, stand to lose the land.

The human shields

Jewish rabbis going up against Jewish settlers may seem counter-intuitive, but different ideologies reflect the two sectors' breakpoint: Biblical Interpretation.

"We have been expelled from everywhere, driven out over and over again. Now we are in power. How will we use that power?" Rabbi Yehuda Schwartz of Rabbis for Human Rights poses as he fielded a call from one of the volunteer rabbis picking nearby.

"Two soldiers showed up at their grove and ordered them to leave," Rabbi Schwartz conveyed after ending the call. "They don't have an evacuation order, so they're standing their ground."

"There's nothing we can do," Jamil, a 50-year-old Palestinian farmer, told CGTN. Jamil has been harvesting his family's olive groves since he was a child. "The settlers threaten us with guns, metal pipes. It terrifies the children. We are grateful for the rabbis. But when they're not here…" Jamil added. 

Beyond aggression at harvest time, settlers' attacks on Palestinian villages is a recurring issue.