Khanna Calls for Investigation of IDF Soldiers After Made-for-TV Confrontation in West Bank

Congressman Ro Khanna is calling on Israeli officials to conduct an investigation and prosecute four IDF officers and Israeli citizens in the West Bank who he says stopped him at a security checkpoint and menacingly taunted him and his entourage, including a New York Times reporter, for 90 minutes. The potential 2028 contender had traveled to Israel last week on the urging of an independent pro-Palestinian journalist and a former anti-Israel congressional candidate-turned-social-media-advisor. He visited an abandoned Bedouin outpost, Khirbet Zanuta, in the southern West Bank. Local Arab leaders said the village had been abandoned following attacks by Israeli settlers. “They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4s, kicking the tires of our van, laughing at us, mocking us, videotaping us. We were detained for about 20 minutes, fearful for our lives,” Mr. Khanna told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in a follow-up interview after a Saturday article published by the New York Times. Calling the situation “unprecedented,” Mr. Khanna said when four Israeli soldiers arrived after 20 minutes, his translator told him that they were “on the side of the settlers.” He said someone in his group then called a U.S. Embassy official who connected with IDF authorities. The tour bus was let through 75 minutes later.“How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?” said the California Democrat, who demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu open an investigation. In a statement issued Saturday, the Israeli Defense Forces said IDF troops were dispatched to the scene to disperse the Israeli civilians and clear the road but did not take part in blocking the road. Mr. Netanyahu, who appeared moments before on the same Sunday program as Mr. Khanna, said Israel is a country of laws and when people break them, they will end up in court. Mr. Netanyahu added, however, that the West Bank has been the scene of thousands of attempted terror attacks and warnings against innocent Israelis, which has triggered the rise of a vigilante group. “There is a vigilante effort, not by the settler community — they are 99.9 percent law-abiding citizens,” he said. “There are 150 juvenile delinquents that are not part of that community. They come from the other parts of Israel. I don’t want vigilantes of any kind, and we are working to put them under the law,” “Israel, unlike our neighbors, is a democracy and a country of law,” he continued, adding that vigilantes will be subject to the “full measure of the law.”Mr. Khanna, an Indian-American who backed Democratic Socialist Graham Platner for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine before Mr. Platner’s retreat last week following rape accusations, went on camera immediately after the delay for an impromptu press conference. He called himself the first American politician subject to “detention” by Israel and said the experience made him “acutely aware of being brown.” An editor for the Jerusalem Post who has been following the story suggested that Mr. Khanna did not share other details of the incident, including confirmation from one of his own aides that the group was allowed to pass when Israeli officers arrived. The editor, Zvika Klein, added that the M4s carried by settlers are issued by the IDF to civilian rapid-response squads who may have been responding to an “unidentified convoy that no one knew was coming.”“Israeli security officials confirm the congressman never coordinated the visit, which is why he had no protection. He toured Area C with programming run exclusively by Palestinian hosts, by his own description, to get an ‘unfiltered’ view. Unfiltered also means unverified,” he said. Area C refers to the portion of the West Bank under Israeli control as authorized under the 1995 Oslo Accords. Israel’s West Bank is no stranger to violence. On Saturday, a CNN crew near Sinjil, northeast of Ramallah, was reportedly attacked by four suspects who smashed windows and slashed tires. The four were later arrested. Last week, the United Nations’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported more than 5,330 settler attacks since 2023 resulting in “casualties, property damage or both.” The agency did not distinguish between Israeli Jews and anyone else behind the 1949- armistice boundary known as the Green Line, which preceded the 1967 borders that are central to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. The organization, which calls the region “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” also did not distinguish between civilian Palestinian victims and Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.Mr. Khanna has raised his name recognition as he makes demonizing Israel central to his 2028 exploratory ambitions, leaving several critics to question his motive in taking the trip. “Ro Khanna flew halfway around the world looking for a platform and some idiot settlers gave it to him,” said an independent Jewish reporter, Hen Mazzig, who has covered settler violence for years and frequently criticizes the Israeli government’s response.“The man who staunchly supported Graham Platner has riled the media into a new frenzy as stories about alleged sexual misconduct and Nazi tattoos fade away. And his greatest allies in this campaign moves are the Israelis from the West Bank,” he wrote on X.

Khanna Calls for Investigation of IDF Soldiers After Made-for-TV Confrontation in West Bank

More from the New York Sun

Conor McGregor’s UFC Return at Las Vegas Offers a Master Class in Marketing

Prince Harry Plays Pickleball as Meghan Markle Is MIA — and a Clandestine Conclave With Charles Appears Doubtful

Florida Republican House Candidate Under Fire for Saying It Is ‘Impossible’ for People To Be Born Gay

More from the New York Sun

Conor McGregor’s UFC Return at Las Vegas Offers a Master Class in Marketing

Prince Harry Plays Pickleball as Meghan Markle Is MIA — and a Clandestine Conclave With Charles Appears Doubtful

Florida Republican House Candidate Under Fire for Saying It Is ‘Impossible’ for People To Be Born Gay

How The Beatles’ ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ Appearance Gave America a New Soundtrack

NATO Leaders Deal Awkwardly With Working Guns Gifted by Erdogan at Summit

Film Forum Finds Itself in Another Fine Mess

Kash Patel Advocate Chuck Grassley Requests FBI Director Provide Receipts of FBI Jet Travel

Democrats Rage at Fetterman for Setting Up Joint Fundraising Operation with GOP Senator