Ro Khanna and the weaponization of anti-Zionism in American politics
Jonathan S. Tobin
The California congressman’s Judean misadventure was an attempt to boost his long-shot presidential hopes and move on from his sponsorship of the disastrous Graham Platner.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) speaks to members of the media near the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., as he arrives for the last votes of the week before the Memorial Day recess, May 21, 2026. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images.
There was a time, not so long ago, when presidential aspirants from both major parties visited Israel to boost their campaigns. They still do so now, but for different reasons, as the recent misadventure of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) illustrated.
In the past, American politicians traveled to Israel to make clear their solidarity with the Jewish state and its American supporters. They understood that this demographic was composed not merely of the vast majority of American Jews, but also of tens of millions of American Christians. Such visits were not merely ways to boost fundraising. They were an effort to demonstrate that the candidate was someone who appreciated that Israel was the sole democratic ally the United States had in the Middle East, as well as a place that deserved the admiration of the world for its tremendous achievements in the face of implacable hostility rooted in Jew-hatred.
Today, they go there to virtue-signal their solidarity with that same hatred.
Anti-Israel virtue-signaling
That’s something that many Israelis and American Jews struggle to understand. Try as they might to see Khanna’s visit—or the previous one by veteran politician Rahm Emanuel in the context of Israeli politics and disputes about who should be running the Jewish state and policies it ought to pursue (including those regarding “violent settlers” in Judea and Samaria)—these episodes are about something very different. They are a way to connect with the left-wing base of the Democratic Party and other Americans who have swallowed the idea that the struggle for global justice is inextricably linked to the Palestinian Arab war on Israel’s existence.
Rather than continuing to litigate the dispute about whether or not, as Khanna falsely claimed, “violent settlers” threatened and illegally detained him (or, as he also falsely claimed, the Israel Defense Forces and police aided those seeking to harm him), we need to understand that something else is going on here. It is the political context of the Khanna dustup that is significant—not the specific facts of the case. Once one sorts through the congressman’s disingenuous rhetoric and the credulous reporting about them in the mainstream media, however, it’s clear that the congressman didn’t tell the truth about what happened.
Khanna went to Israel to show the world that he’s against the Jewish state. The fact that he subsequently said that those who had explained his version of the incident were largely made up out of whole cloth were the same people who “lied about genocide” in Gaza tells you all you need to know about the story. Just as there has been no genocide in Gaza, there is no “apartheid” in Israel. Even some fellow Democrats who are not so invested in catering to the anti-Zionist crowd have criticized him for such a publicity stunt.
A big deal over nothing
The short version of the Khanna confrontation is that, accompanied by anti-Israel activists and some press people, the congressman journeyed into an area of Judea and Samaria that the IDF considers a closed military zone. Had he chosen to coordinate his trip with the U.S. embassy or the Israeli military or police, he likely would not have encountered any trouble. But since he did not—his tour guide was unable to ensure him ahead of time that there would be no issues—Jews who live in the area became suspicious and stopped him.
One can argue that they shouldn’t have done so, but videos supplied by Khanna’s entourage don’t back up the assertion that settlers threatened or detained him. Nor were they violent. They may have been armed, but all Jews living there are because of the ongoing hazard of Arab terrorism, which continues daily, even though it is rarely, if ever, reported in the press.
It was only after this encounter that Khanna reached out to the embassy, and soon, IDF soldiers arrived. When they arrived, not only did they not “side” with the supposedly violent settlers and acquiesce in Khanna’s “detainment.” Instead, they stayed in their vehicles and made the relevant calls to higher authorities, and soon sent him on his way.
It was, as Israeli commentator Haviv Rettig Gur, himself a loud critic of “violent settlers,” pointed out, an “irrelevance.”
Nothing happened, save for the fact that Khanna was delayed for a while. And that was largely because while traveling in a foreign country in an area where violence is routine—not from Jews, but from local Arabs—he chose not to inform the authorities where he was or what he was doing.
Why, then, did Khanna make a big deal about such a nothing burger?
The answer is obvious. Outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and even some Israeli and Jewish media were willing to publicize the event as an instance of “settler violence,” even before they knew the facts. For them, it fits into a narrative of Israeli bad behavior that they think defines the contemporary Jewish state. The liberal Times of Israel amplified Khanna’s demand that the Jews who had asked what he was doing there should be punished, since they think it helps undermine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters.
Why the focus on ‘violent settlers’
For many inside Israel and in the American Jewish community, this isn’t about Khanna and his ambitions, but a chance to vent their anger and frustration concerning the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in Judea and Samaria. After the Second Intifada from the years 2000 to 2005, Israel—under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005. That move directly led to the transformation of the coastal enclave into a Hamas terrorist state in the summer of 2007.
The tragedy of Oct. 7, 2023, was the result of that terrible decision. In light of the massacre of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 others that day, only a deluded radical fringe can go on advocating for a two-state solution.
The goal of evicting Jews from the heart of their ancient homeland to create a Palestinian state that will bring peace between the two peoples is a fairytale that, in reality, is a formula for more bloodshed. It is now painfully obvious that Palestinian national identity is linked to the dream of eradicating Israel, not achieving self-determination. So, all those who believed in this pretense are left with is the demonization of the Jews, who helped prevent their country from making the same mistake in Judea and Samaria that Sharon made in Gaza.
Yet their narrative about violent settlers, which has been adopted even by liberal Americans who support Israel, is itself a calumny. As JNS has reported, more than 90% of incidents reported as “settler violence” are nothing of the kind. Most are ordinary acts of Jews merely living or worshipping over the so-called “Green Line,” such as visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Every time a Jew defends themselves against Arab terror, it is considered an act of “settler violence.” And even incidents, such as one I was told about during a recent visit to the same region Khanna was touring, which involved local Palestinian Arabs killing a sheepdog belonging to an Israeli farming family, have been falsely reported as Jews killing a Palestinian Arab-owned dog.
Neither Khanna nor those who cheered his antics in the media after he cried “wolf” about settler violence care about these facts—or what happened when some Israelis had the temerity to ask him where he was going.
The real context is what is happening in the Democratic Party.
A political chameleon
Khanna, a native of Philadelphia and the son of Indian immigrant parents, is, like many in his profession, something of a political chameleon. A lawyer, he served as deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Obama administration. He was elected to Congress in 2016, where he continues to represent Silicon Valley.
He describes himself as a pro-business “progressive,” a contradiction in terms, but something that has ingratiated him with the left-leaning oligarchs who run Big Tech. In 2022, he was part of a delegation of pro-Israel members of Congress led by then House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But since Oct. 7, the views of the once marginal left-wing “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives about Israel and antisemitism have become mainstream discourse in the Democratic Party, as well as in liberal media.
Khanna is someone with national ambitions. He understands which way the wind is currently blowing in his party and has used his considerable sway with Democratic donors to invest in promoting some of the most prominent left-wing anti-Israel primary candidates, in addition to Democratic Socialists who oppose the capitalism that produced Silicon Valley.
He endorsed and campaigned with Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan Islamist who has parlayed a nonstop stream of antisemitic invective demonizing the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC into a real chance of winning the state’s Democratic primary in August.
Khanna was also one of those most responsible for promoting the political fortunes of Graham Platner, the Nazi-tattooed Israel-basher who won the Democratic Senate primary in Maine. Khanna aided those seeking to deflect attention from scandals surrounding Platner, including those involving sexual misconduct. But his efforts collapsed after a local woman he dated years ago, a liberal activist, stepped forward with an accusation of rape, which ultimately forced Platner to withdraw from the race.
As recriminations among Democrats about those who foisted Platner on their party grew, Khanna knew that he needed to do something to change the conversation about his own role in that debacle. He may be a long shot for 2028 and is not yet making the cut in polls for the top 10 contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, which is currently led by figures like former vice president Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. But the congressman more than realizes that the party establishment that has dominated the presidential nomination process over the last three election cycles is unlikely to fend off the progressives who backed Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020. And so, he naturally turned to an issue that unites the left as a way of refocusing attention on himself.
Seen from that perspective, it doesn’t matter that thoughtful observers know that he lied about what happened on his recent trip to Israel.
Had he been interested in learning more about the conflict, in addition to meeting Palestinians who support the war on the Jews—like the mayor of Hebron, who murdered two Americans—then he might have met with Israelis from southern Israel who had been held hostage by Hamas or those residents in the north who have been rendered homeless by Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon. His visit, however, was orchestrated to show support for the blood libels about “genocide” and “apartheid.” All it does is reinforce the determination of Hamas and other terror groups to keep fighting for Israel’s destruction in the hope that someday, America will turn on its longtime Middle East ally: Israel.
Thinking about 2028
It’s unlikely that Khanna cares about the way he is helping to perpetuate the conflict. All he wants is to create a narrative in which he can be singled out as the most active and most-funded left-winger around whom progressives can unite in 2028.
Will he succeed? As one among many others on the left with similar ambitions, it’s difficult to envision Khanna being his party’s standard-bearer in two years. But stranger things have happened.
Still, his conduct should attract interest not so much because of the dubious notion that he is presidential timber, but because he is not mistaken about what will help galvanize Democrats. As we have seen in primary after primary this year, hostility to Israel has become, alongside a belief in open borders and anger about ICE enforcing immigration laws, the organizing principle of Democratic politics in 2026. If there is one prediction that seems safe to make right now, it is that he won’t be the only presidential candidate in two years who will try to weaponize anti-Zionism and hatred for Israel to smooth his path to the White House.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
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