DayofPal—Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna said he was detained by armed Israeli settlers carrying US-made M4 assault rifles during his visit to the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.
Khann, who is as a progressive lawmaker from California and is considering a 2028 presidential run, described the attack as evidence of how American-supplied weapons are being used in settler violence against Palestinians.
Armed settlers surrounded his delegation’s van and blocked his road when he was touring Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian village in the southern West Bank that Israeli settlers had previously destroyed, including its school.
Khanna wrote on X: “Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me and other Americans on my trip to Palestine. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued our detention. They made a huge mistake. You will be hearing more soon.”
“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. And these hoodlums come in with machine guns, M4, an American-made machine gun, and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said as he was speaking to Reuters afterward the attack from a Palestinian village.
Khanna deliberately chose a West Bank-only visit with programming led by Palestinians, refusing engagement with Israeli officials to obtain an unfiltered understanding of Israeli occupation.
He stated: “If you’re unwilling to speak up for Palestinian human rights, if you’re unwilling to speak up against the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid in the West Bank, then you are morally compromised.”
Lhanna also said his party’s establishment was “clueless about how much of a moral test Palestine, Gaza and Israel have become.”
Asked about his 2028 presidential ambitions, Khanna said: “I’m strongly considering it, and I’m more resolved to consider it after this trip.”
The attack exposes the direct connection between US military aid to Israel and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
The US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid, including funding for light weaponry like the M4 rifles used to detain Khanna.
An increasing number of Democrats in Congress are now pressing to cut off military aid to Israel over its conduct in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Israel’s favorability rating among Democratic voters has collapsed from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026.
Israeli settlers armed under Ben Gvir’s direct authority as National Security Minister have conducted an escalating campaign of attacks against Palestinian villages across the occupied West Bank since October 2023, killing residents, burning homes, destroying crops, and forcing entire communities to abandon their land.
Such armed settlers operate under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, who consistently arrive at scenes of violence to secure the settlers rather than stopping them.
Khanna’s experience confirmed exactly this dynamic. When settlers surrounded his van, the Israeli army arrived, gaurded the settler attackers and continued to detain the American congressman.
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