A group of extremist Jewish settlers equipped with US-made M4 rifles detained US lawmaker Ro Khanna and his group during their visit this week to the southern occupied West Bank, the Democratic representative has disclosed.
"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," Khanna told Reuters on Thursday. "And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road." Khanna said, adding, "And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans."
via ReutersKhanna's aide, Cameron Kasky, said the delegation was held for over an hour near Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian hamlet ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers in 2023, before appealing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem to free them.
Khanna's visit to the occupied West Bank comes as support for Israel splits Democrats ahead of the US midterm elections in November, with the issue contributing to primary defeats for incumbent lawmakers financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Israel's favorability rating among Democratic voters has fallen from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May 2026, according to recent polls.
The US lawmaker's confrontation with
