Ro Khanna accuses IDF of ‘lying’ about West Bank incident that led to detainment

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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Sunday alleged the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is lying about an incident in the West Bank that led to him being detained by Israeli settlers.

Khanna appeared on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” where host Kristen Welker read a statement about the incident, in which Khanna traveled to a small Palestinian village in the southern West Bank on Wednesday when armed men blocked the road and began swearing at him and his team and kicking the minibus they were traveling in.

Four IDF soldiers arrived, sided with the settlers and eventually let Khanna go after communication between the U.S. embassy and a high-level Israeli official. The IDF said in a statement that they arrived quickly and “dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road. The IDF soldiers operating in the area did not take part in blocking the road.”

“The IDF is lying,” Khanna said. “What happened was unprecedented. 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 at us, videotaping us. We were detained for about 20 minutes, fearful of our lives.”

Khanna said the four IDF soldiers arrived and said they were on the side of the settlers. Seventy-five minutes after calling the U.S. embassy, Khanna and his team were allowed to pass.

“Now, I heard the prime minister,” Khanna said of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke earlier in the program. “And he said Israel is a country of law and order. Well, let me be very specific. The prime minister needs to open an investigation on these violent settlers who are connected to Yinon Levi, who has destroyed Zanuta’s village and is a known person who has killed Palestinians.”

Khanna called for an investigation into the four IDF officers for their involvement in his detention, adding, “How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?”

The Hill has reached out to the IDF for comment.

Netanyahu told Welker that Israel was a “country of laws” but that there is a “vigilante effort not by the settler community,” saying these settlers are almost entirely made up of “law-abiding citizens” but that they are also comprised of “150 juvenile delinquents.”

“I don’t want vigilantes of any kind,” Netanyahu told Welker. “And we are working to put them under the law. But I think if we put things in perspective, we should see that we have thousands of attacks. And some, few, but obvious breaking of the law, then we apply the full measure of the law against them. Israel, unlike our neighbors, is a democracy and a country of laws, and we act against those who break the law.”

Khanna, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, has been an outspoken critic of Israel and has accused the country of genocide for its military actions in Gaza. He told The New York Times that it was “not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates,” and he indicated this experience would inform a potential presidential run in 2028.

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Benjamin Netanyahu

Kristen Welker

Ro Khanna

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