{"id":209441,"date":"2026-07-16T12:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/209441\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:37:13","slug":"ro-khannas-tour-highlights-israels-public-diplomacy-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/209441\/","title":{"rendered":"Ro Khanna’s tour highlights Israel’s public diplomacy challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Representative Ro Khanna<\/a> (D-CA) visited Israel last week for the express purpose, as he termed it, of seeing what the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (the Occupied West Bank<\/a>, as he called it) who live there are up against.<\/p>\n

Who is this person who has internalized such a visceral dislike of Israel?<\/p>\n

For starters, Khanna, who represents a district at the southern end of Silicon Valley<\/a>, and Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY), who was recently primaried out of running for another term because Trump dislikes him, teamed up in Congress recently to fight the integration of the US and Israeli militaries.<\/p>\n

Together, they introduced an amendment to the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to strip funding and tech-sharing programs between the two countries. Thankfully, the leadership of the House of Representatives blocked the amendment from receiving a vote, which Khanna then termed \u201cunconscionable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both lawmakers argued, without substantiation, that such integration threatens American sovereignty and avoids congressional oversight while giving no detail as to why they thought this way.<\/p>\n

\"USUS Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) speaks with a Palestinian resident of Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah, during a visit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, July 9, 2026. (credit: REUTERS\/AMMAR AWAD)Khanna’s criticism of Israel<\/p>\n

Of course, they both have a history of opposing expanded US involvement in Middle East conflicts. Khanna has also criticized Israel\u2019s military conduct in Gaza<\/a> and opposed funding for the Iron Dome. Khanna is not a friend of ours, to be sure.<\/p>\n

During his visit this past week, he alleged that armed Israeli settlers and military personnel surrounded and detained his vehicle in the village of Turmus Aiya for over an hour. Khanna later criticized the Israeli Defense Forces for protecting the settlers<\/p>\n

In a taped interview during his visit aired on DRM news (which can be seen here):<\/p>\n

He said of the IDF personnel who arrived on the scene to assist: \u201cI saw the arrogance in the eyes of those settlers. 21- and 22-year-olds with guns, laughing that they had detained us. The arrogance of those young IDF soldiers that my tax dollars are funding. It is the arrogance of power, a power that has had no accountability, total impunity, and has created a toxic culture of oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notice how he conflated the settlers that had blocked the road on which his van was traveling and the IDF troops who came to assist. For sure, settlers living in Judea and Samaria are clearly in violation of the law if they stopped the vehicle in which the Congressperson was traveling and, if that is the case, they should be prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it is common knowledge that most often there is no accountability for the illegal acts of the settler community. That must change, of course.<\/p>\n

Yet according to the IDF\u2019s report on the incident, the military spokesperson claimed that Khanna\u2019s guide knowingly brought him into a closed military area near Khirbet Zanuta. When notified, IDF troops and police officers intervened after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles. In the words of the IDF: \u201cUpon their arrival, the troops disbursed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khanna also said: \u201cWhat people in America are asking is, are you so bought and sold by the establishment and political donors that you cannot see human injustice? So, if you are unwilling to speak up for Palestinian human rights, if you are unwilling to speak up against the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid in the West Bank, then you are morally compromised and we cannot trust you to fight for Medicare for all, or to fight for workers over the billionaires, or to fight for justice and human rights, in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a mouthful, eh? In speaking about what he hears from the electorate in the US, he spews forth every canard spoken over the years about what is going on here with presumed linkage to the resultant inability of the voter to trust him because of what his position may be about Israel.<\/p>\n

Sadly, that does seem to be the litmus test in American politics these days. Nevertheless, it takes a certain amount of gall to invoke a non-existent genocide in Gaza as something American citizens care about when what they probably really want their representatives to do is to reinstate their full Medicare coverage or fight for the rights of workers in the US.<\/p>\n

Yet what is most surprising to this writer is that there seems to have been no official Israeli government escort with Khanna\u2019s group as they toured the area. How come?<\/p>\n

Congressman Khanna is a known quantity here who is on national television in the US often mouthing the same drivel there that he emoted here. So, hopefully, our government knew that this was someone who would make the trip just to stir up more anger at Israel, not only among his district\u2019s constituents, but also Americans generally, given that he is now a nationally known political figure.<\/p>\n

One would think, therefore, that a well-run Foreign Ministry would make sure that there was someone from the Ministry with Khanna all the time he was in the country. First of all, Israel could then carefully watch what he does, where he goes, and what he says.<\/p>\n

But as importantly, if there was an incident such as the one described, whatever the disputed particulars turn out to have actually occurred, the Israeli government representative presumably would have known how to deal with it.<\/p>\n

For those who think that it is possible that Israel offered an escort and Khanna or his people refused, that is highly unlikely in my opinion. If that had been the case, it would have surfaced in the resultant news feeds, but there has been nary a mention of such an offer by either side.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, why doesn\u2019t Israel have a policy in place that says, while we welcome such visits, we consider them important enough to have a government representative accompany the visitor while in Israel.<\/p>\n

If the visitor refuses, he or she can be denied entry and then go back to his or her country and badmouth us. For the kind of visitor that Ro Khanna represents, that\u2019s going to happen either way. So, there is no downside, is there?<\/p>\n

The citizens of his district may, of course, honestly believe that Khanna is, as he says, \u201cmorally compromised.\u201d However, their reasons for feeling that way probably have very little to do with his position on Israel.<\/p>\n

My guess is that the good citizens of Milpitas and Sunnyvale in the southern Silicon Valley of California (i.e., the district he represents), given a choice, would prefer that he spend his valuable time and exert his considerable influence on making their lives better and less time on bashing Israel. Not doing so would do more to make him morally compromised than anything that happens here.<\/p>\n

Ro Khanna is no friend of ours, nor does he understand Israel\u2019s role as the canary in the coal mine against Iranian aggression. Perhaps when he returns to the US, he should spend more time with the large Israeli tech presence in his district to learn why supporting Israel is as much in the interest of the US as it is in ours.<\/p>\n

The writer, a 42-year resident of Jerusalem, is a former national president of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, a past chairperson of the board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and a Board Member of the Israel-America Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) visited Israel last week for the express purpose, as he termed it, of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[671,5564,3748,496,423,37,14889,1353,6905],"class_list":["post-209441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-america","tag-california","tag-foreign-ministry","tag-gaza","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-judea-and-samaria","tag-silicon-valley","tag-west-bank"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116929694484033846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}