California Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a likely 2028 presidential candidate, appeared on the Coleman Hughes podcast “Conversations with Coleman” on Aug. 10. He was rightly challenged on his antisemitic claim that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. The congressman’s response revealed that when faced with facts contradicting his narrative, he resorts to lies to justify his position.
Hughes noted that genocide requires intent, and the facts show that once Israel got all of its hostages back in October 2025, it agreed to a ceasefire and ended the main fighting. In response, Khanna lied. He claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned down numerous offers of a substantially similar deal to get all the hostages back and end the war.
This is absolutely false. The deal that ended the fighting was the first one Jerusalem had been offered that did not demand Israel withdraw from all of Gaza to get the hostages back. Such a withdrawal would have allowed Hamas to rebuild its military and potentially launch another attack. Despite the high cost of releasing many mass murderers of Jews, Netanyahu accepted the deal to secure the release of men and women, both living and dead, including the retrieval of bodies killed on Oct. 7, 2023, or afterwards, and that were being held by Hamas.
Netanyahu’s record on this issue is clear. Following the massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, Netanyahu swiftly formulated a joint objective: Rescue the hostages and eliminate the threat posed by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis. All are terror proxies of Iran.
A hostage deal finalized in January 2025 led to the release of 33 living hostages, including the last surviving female hostages, over several weeks. In return, Israel released mass murderers and approximately 2,000 other Hamas prisoners. Additionally, Israel withdrew from substantial portions of the territory that it had seized from Hamas in Gaza.
While individuals like Khanna falsely accuse Israel of committing genocide, U.S. President Donald Trump rightly identified Hamas as the perpetrator of a genocide on Oct. 7. He recognized that the only feasible way to secure the remaining hostages was if the terror group was aware that Trump would fully support Israel militarily, thereby instilling the fear of destruction in Hamas.
As such, Trump supported Netanyahu’s decision to take control of Gaza City from Hamas. After Israel gained control of approximately half the city, Hamas agreed to a deal to release all the hostages without Israel withdrawing from Gaza. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Trump’s Mideast negotiators and advisers, Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, clearly stated that it was only after they informed Hamas that holding the hostages would lead to its destruction that the group finally offered to release them all.
The president realized that the only way to secure the release of all the hostages was to support Netanyahu’s military pressure on Hamas—and it worked.
Facts are crucial. Narrative must be grounded in evidence. If the facts contradict the narrative, then the narrative must be revised.
Libel against Jews, such as that espoused by Khanna, is just such a narrative.
