US Democratic lawmaker Ro Khanna said he was detained by settlers (he made no distinctions between violent settlers and violent Jews living inside the Green Line) armed with US-made rifles during a visit to the West Bank last week, a story that he tweeted out on Saturday.
Khanna, who has served California’s 17th district since 2017, is among Congress’s most vocal critics of the Israeli government and has backed legislation that would block offensive or defensive weapons sales to Israel in order to penalize it over what he characterizes as genocide in Gaza.
The US congressman was in the region last week, meeting with Palestinians while avoiding meeting with Israeli officials, though he visited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in October 2024 as part of a large congressional delegation.
Khanna said his group’s van was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles while touring Khirbet Zanuta, whose residents were forcibly displaced by settler raids in December 2024.
The official Israeli account essentially concurs with Khanna’s version of events up until this point.
There are significant discrepancies between Khanna's narrative and the IDF's
According to Israeli officials, the incident itself constitutes a grave failure on the Israeli side, both for failing to prevent the harassment and, as of press time, for failing to detain the settlers involved (though officials do bring statistics that Palestinian terror is far worse).
However, moving on to the narrative surrounding the IDF’s conduct during the event, there are significant discrepancies.
The IDF said that its forces dispersed the settlers who were unlawfully detaining and harassing Khanna and his group.
According to military sources who spoke to The Jerusalem Post, the IDF did not detain Khanna in any way, and the US congressman did not communicate with the military before or after his visit.
This was partly how he was able to be accosted, given that he had no escort, and clearly did not want one.
In addition, the IDF and the Israel Police said that no official complaint has been filed that would be a basis for them to seek to arrest those involved.
Rep. Khanna responded to an inquiry from the Post about the incident, saying, “The Israeli government is lying to cover up for four IDF soldiers who aided violent settlers brandishing M4 guns and threatening American lives. I am calling for their arrest and prosecution.”
A spokeswoman for Khanna then referred the Post to Nadav Weiman, who helped run Khanna’s tour of the area.
Weiman is the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group that say it aims “to expose the public to the daily reality of the occupation and Israeli military rule over the Palestinian civilian population in the territories.”
The groups also say, “we all agree that the occupation cannot be a solution and must be ended, as military rule over a civilian population can never be moral or humane.”
According to Weiman’s account of the incident, there were two primary offenders among the settlers, one man who held an M4 with a silencer and one who had a handgun.
Weiman passed the name of the man holding the handgun to the Post, which then asked the police and the IDF whether they had identified the individual, were pursuing him, and sought to contact him for a response.
During the period of time that two vehicles of settlers were blocking Khanna’s group from leaving the area, about 20 minutes passed, according to Weiman.
Weiman called the Israeli Police while Khanna's team called the US embassy for assistance
Simultaneously, Weiman and some of the other travelers called the Israel Police for assistance, while Khanna or members of his staff called the US Embassy for assistance.
Interestingly, Weiman said that it was the settlers who called the IDF officials who ended up arriving at the scene after 20 minutes.
Next, he said that the IDF soldiers present, including a contingent of relatively right-wing sounding female soldiers, blocked Khanna from leaving the area for another 40 minutes.
Further, Weiman said that none of the soldiers approached Khanna to discuss the situation or clarify who he was.
Rather, he said that the only interaction they had was when he exited his car and approached the soldiers to ask for help and inform them of Khanna’s status as a prominent US official, to which they responded dismissively.
Moreover, Weiman stated that none of the soldiers came to speak to Khanna or assisted him in any way to leave the area where the settlers had blocked his exit, even after he conveyed to them that the police headquarters had instructed the soldiers to allow Khanna and his entourage to leave.
Weiman recounted that the soldiers said they would not receive instructions from the police headquarters but only from a police officer who would arrive in person on the scene.
About two minutes later, when a police officer finally arrived on the scene, the settlers suddenly rushed back to their cars and raced away, he said.
Police, IDF arrive on the scene
The police officer took two minutes to take the details of Khanna and his entourage and then ordered the IDF to move their vehicles so that the American official could leave the scene.
While Weiman did not know for sure, he estimated that the soldiers had warned the settlers that a policeman was about to arrive so that they would have time to escape.
Asked whether Khanna and his entourage were improperly present in a closed military zone without coordination and clearance, Weiman responded that this was “turning justice upside down.”
He said the area was declared a closed military zone only to prevent violent Jewish extremists from entering after they had harassed the Palestinian village there so severely that its residents abandoned their land.
Accordingly, Weiman said that outsiders visiting the abandoned village to draw scrutiny to the settlers’ violations could not constitute a violation of any kind.
Weiman also promised to send additional video footage of the incident but said he was working through various technical problems to be able to share the footage at press time.
While the police and IDF, as noted above, issued initial responses to Khanna and his entourage’s initial narrative, at press time, neither had provided an updated response to the more detailed account that the Post received on Sunday.