Israeli settlers held US lawmaker Ro Khanna at gunpoint in occupied West Bank

Settlers carrying US-made rifles blocked the congressman’s delegation as it visited a Palestinian village ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers

By Elis Gjevori, Middle East Eye

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.

“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.