An American Politician Is Blocked by Israeli Settlers in the West Bank - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/us/politics/ro-khanna-west-bank.html
The Israeli settlers had guns and Representative Ro Khanna was scared.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Khanna, the congressman from Silicon Valley who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, was visiting the ruins of Khirbet Zanuta, a tiny Palestinian Bedouin village in the southern West Bank that was abandoned after escalating attacks from settlers and then demolished.
Suddenly, a car of men holding guns pulled up and blocked the narrow road out of the village. The men began taunting the congressman and his team, swearing at them in Hebrew and Arabic and kicking the tires of their minibus, according to accounts, photographs and video footage from Mr. Khanna, an aide and his security guard. A photographer for The New York Times traveling in a different vehicle also saw the interaction. Soon, a Jeep with more men arrived.
When two cars from the Israeli military pulled up, Mr. Khanna assumed the soldiers were there to help him pass. Instead, the soldiers smoked cigarettes, chatted with the men and after the settlers left, moved a car to block the road, he recounted.
[…]
Mr. Khanna, who is Indian American and grew up in Pennsylvania, said he had never been so aware of his race as on this trip.
Image
“In Palestine, I felt first as someone who was brown,” he said. “We really saw the apartheidlike conditions, the inequality.”
