Armed Israeli settlers carrying US-made weapons held Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna at gunpoint in the occupied West Bank as he visited Palestinian communities to witness Israel’s human rights abuses first-hand.
“Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine,” Khanna wrote on X on Saturday.
“When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention,” he said, referring to the Israeli military.
“They made a huge mistake” he added.
Khanna, a progressive California lawmaker, was visiting Khirbet Zanuta, a Palestinian community whose residents were ethnicaly cleansed by Israeli settlers who burned its school, looted homes, assaulted residents with rifles and stones, smashed windows and solar panels, emptied water tanks and pumped raw sewage onto farmland.
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“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.
“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” he said.
Cameron Kasky, an aide travelling with Khanna, said the settlers held the delegation for more than an hour. The group repeatedly contacted the US embassy in Jerusalem for assistance.
Israeli police officers eventually intervened and secured their release, Kasky said.
It is unclear whether Mike Huckabee, the hardline pro-Israel US ambassador to Israel, intervened on their behalf or protested against their treatment.
The Israeli military confirmed that settlers had blocked vehicles near Khirbet Zanuta but claimed that its forces ended the confrontation.
Israel receives $3.8bn in annual US military assistance, which includes funding for weapons such as the M4 rifles carried by the settlers.
Support for Israel among Democratic voters has collapsed following the genocide in Gaza and its growing awareness of Israel’s aparthaid politices in the West Bank.
Israel’s favourability rating among Democrats fell from 59 percent in 2018 to 22 percent in May, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
