Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is facing backlash at home after supporting a Maine Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo who dropped out after being accused of rape, said on Saturday that he had been detained during a trip to Israel.
“Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me and other Americans on my trip to Palestine,” he said.
The United States does not recognize an independent state of “Palestine.”
On the trip, Khanna reportedly declined to meet with former Israeli hostages, and Israel Police reportedly said that it dispersed the crowd and sent the congressman on his way. Some accounts said that it was local security, and not “settlers,” who detained the congressman when he reportedly went to a closed military area.
JNS sought comment from the Israeli government and the congressman.
“When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued our detention,” Khanna said in a social media post, in which he shared a four-second video. “They made a huge mistake. You will be hearing more soon.”
In response to a comment from a co-founder of Democratic Majority for Israel, Khanna said, “let’s put politics aside.”
“Would you join in calling for the arrest of the settlers who threatened us with M4 guns and of the four IDF soldiers, who aided them in detaining American citizens?” the congressman said. “Surely we can agree that threatening holders of an American passport should have consequences.”
Khanna’s colleague Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) wrote that the congressman’s post “sounds like another plea for publicity.”
“Anything to get in front of the camera,” Murphy wrote. “Why else would you be there? It isn’t your country.”
Other colleagues, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of Israel’s harshest critics in Congress, came to Khanna’s defense.
Omar called the incident “absolutely vile” and said that American tax dollars were being used to “terrorize Palestinians and U.S. citizens” and that the Jewish state is a “genocidal apartheid regime.”
Khanna, who has accused Israel of commiting “genocide,” told the New York Times that it was “not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates.”
