Khanna says IDF sided with settlers, not the Americans
Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California, said the detention occurred on Wednesday in the southern West Bank near the Palestinian hamlet of Khirbet Zanuta. He told Reuters that settlers carrying US-made M4 rifles surrounded his group’s van, blocked the road, and then called the IDF.
“When they call the IDF, the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said.
“They had no respect for the fact that they were detaining Americans, no respect that there was an American congressperson in that bus, and laughing when our translator told them that there are Americans there and the American embassy is concerned,” Khanna said of both the settlers and the IDF soldiers.
Khanna’s aide Cameron Kasky wrote on X that he was present and that the “IDF showed up to back up the settlers, not the US congressman.”
The Israeli military told Reuters that troops and police responded after receiving a report that settlers were obstructing vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta. In a separate statement reported by CBS News, the IDF said the “identity of the armed individual is currently under review” and that soldiers “did not take part in blocking the road.”
Khanna said the incident lasted about 90 minutes and that his group was able to continue traveling only after contacting the US embassy and Israeli police.
“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed – they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” Khanna said.
The episode occurred in a territory where more than 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank. The United Nations considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law. Israel has faced repeated international criticism over violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. The Guardian reported that data from the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din shows no Israeli has been indicted for killing a Palestinian since October 2023.
Khanna, who has been one of the most outspoken critics in the US Congress of the Gaza war and West Bank occupation, said the encounter illustrated what he called “the arrogance of power – of a power that has had no accountability, total impunity – and it’s created a toxic culture of oppression.”
In a separate interview with The New York Times, Khanna said: “I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life. Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”
Khanna recently criticized the Democratic Party’s postmortem of its 2024 presidential defeat, saying the party lost partly because of its “blank check to Israel and Netanyahu while they committed genocide in Gaza.” Asked whether he intends to run for president, Khanna told Reuters: “I’m strongly considering it. And I’m more resolved to consider it after this trip.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry in June concluded that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank,” according to The Guardian.