Ro Khanna uses Jewish lives as fodder for presidential ambitions

California Congressman Ro Khanna announced last weekend that “Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention.”

Khanna was trying to turn 90 minutes on an Israeli road into political capital, asking supporters to imagine what Palestinians endure every day if even a member of Congress could be treated this way.

Powerful politics. But an incomplete story.

Khanna’s office says his trip to Israel was financed with campaign funds. Before it began, his staff reportedly told the Israeli Embassy it would be a private visit, with no official meetings.

Ro Khanna was trying to turn 90 minutes on an Israeli road into political capital. AP Photo/Meg Kinnard

According to a source involved in the planning, Israel nevertheless offered meetings with survivors of the Oct. 7 terror attack and others affected by the conflict.

Those offers, the source said, were declined.

Apparently, Khanna’s delegation was more interested in reinforcing a conclusion about the Jewish state than testing one.

I’ve assisted in taking members of Congress through Judea and Samaria (West Bank) with the US-Israel Education Association. Serious congressional delegations coordinate these visits carefully. 

When we visit predominantly Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, we travel with Jewish guides and buses marked with Hebrew lettering. When the itinerary includes lands with mostly Palestinian Arab populations, we switch to Arab guides and buses clearly marked in Arabic. 

For Khanna’s delegation to move through an Israeli-populated area relying on a single Palestinian Arab activist as a guide was an invitation to exactly the kind of confrontation that followed. 

Not because of “Israeli apartheid.” Because of Israeli funerals.

During the Second Intifada, Palestinian suicide bombers turned Israeli buses, cafés and family restaurants into terrorist targets. Israel’s security architecture was built in response to that harrowing reality.

To debate the checkpoints without recalling what produced them is to explain the lock while forgetting the burglar.

For Khanna’s delegation to move through an Israeli-populated area relying on a single Palestinian Arab activist as a guide was an invitation to exactly the kind of confrontation that followed.  Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post

Reportedly, local personnel were unaware of Khanna’s delegation until the foreign ministry intervened. If his delegation entered an area without proper coordination, Congress deserves to know who approved it. If the delegation had full authorization and was nevertheless improperly stopped, then, sure, Khanna deserves an apology.

What we do know is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a public statement saying that no soldiers detained Khanna, no one was injured and the road was reopened after the Israeli civilians blocking it were dispersed.

A delay of roughly 90 minutes may have been frustrating. It was not, on the evidence now available, political persecution. Nor was it an event of worldwide importance, deserving of the media coverage it received. 

Compare Khanna’s experience to the lynchings of Israelis who take a wrong turn into Palestinian Arab areas. Measured against that standard, a delay on a rural road is not the outrage Khanna made it out to be.

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Yet before many of these facts had been established, Khanna’s overly dramatic account of the road stop had already become the accepted narrative.

That is the real story.

A hyped-up allegation against Israel moves at extraordinary speed. The correction arrives later, reaches a fraction of the audience and rarely changes the public impression.

The most meaningful feature of the whole episode is the media’s knee-jerk assumptions. Much of the news coverage simply assumed the truth of Khanna’s portrayal of Israeli wickedness.

The conclusion preceded the evidence. That is how anti-Israel propaganda works. It establishes the moral accusation first, then treats contradictory facts as secondary, if not omitting them entirely.

Khanna is considering a White House bid, and that may be the reason he wanted to draw attention to himself, stake out an anti-Israel position to attract support from the most left-wing elements in his party or shift focus away from his support for accused sexual abuser and one-time Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner.

Or, Khanna may sincerely believe the conclusions he drew from his visit. He is entitled to those views.

But sincerity does not excuse selective storytelling, and political theater is no substitute for careful fact-finding. 

Bruce Pearl is the former head basketball coach of Auburn University and chairman of the US-Israel Education Association.