00:00Hi, I'm home safely, and I just wanted to thank everyone who reached out.
00:04Honestly, it's still quite raw, and I'm still processing things, replaying the images of the
00:12armed settlers who detained us and the four IDF soldiers who helped them blockade our van.
00:20It was quite scary. But, you know, I also have just been thinking about all the Palestinians
00:28I met and their stories. They don't have the platform I do. And I was just so emotionally
00:37moved as a human being, not as a politician, just as a person hearing those stories. There was a
00:44father who broke down in tears talking about how his 14-year-old son, an American citizen,
00:50was killed by the IDF. And he talked about how he hasn't changed his son's room.
00:57Because of the grief he feels. I met Palestinian families who did not have enough water to flush
01:06the toilet or to wash their clothes while Israeli settlers had four times the water. I talked to a
01:14school principal who described the scene of a school shooting, something we're familiar with
01:22here in the United States. And he said that even as one of his students was killed, he does not
01:29know
01:30if there has been any investigation into the school shooter. The police, the IDF have never talked to
01:35him. He has had no justice. I talked to street owners and shop owners in Hebron, who said that
01:47settlers from the top would urinate down on them, would throw acid at them, would throw rotten vegetables
01:54at them. I saw checkpoints where you had two different license plates. One license plate,
02:01if you were an Israeli settler, another license plate, if you were Palestinian. And I talked to a
02:07Palestinian man, Palestinian American, who was at that checkpoint a couple of days ago. And he was
02:14beaten because he did not speak Hebrew. And he said, well, he's been away from Palestine for years,
02:21and he didn't speak Hebrew. And the guards beat him and took his money. You know, it doesn't really
02:27matter what your ideology is. What is happening in the West Bank is just inhumane. No human being
02:34would tolerate it. That's what I want to try to get across. It's like the Jim Crow South.
02:40We need to stand up for human dignity. We need to tell the stories of what's happening to Palestinians
02:47and Palestinian Americans in the West Bank. It's just wrong. And I intend to try to give them a voice
02:54and try to tell those stories in the days and weeks ahead.
03:09A sitting U.S. congressman surrounded by armed settlers in the middle of the West Bank.
03:17No, this isn't a movie plot. This happened this week. And the guy at the center of it,
03:22he might be running for president in 2028. His name is Ro Khanna. Progressive Democrat,
03:30represents Silicon Valley in Congress. And on July 9th, he was on a fact-finding trip through Israel
03:37and the occupied West Bank during Congress's recess. He wasn't there for a photo op at a checkpoint.
03:43He went to a village called Kirbet Zenuta, a small Palestinian hamlet that was forcibly displaced
03:50after violent settler raids following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Khanna wanted to see the
03:57aftermath for himself. He got a lot more than he bargained for. According to Khanna, his group's van
04:05was surrounded by settlers wielding M4 rifles, American-made rifles, while they were touring the
04:11area. In his own words to Reuters, Khanna described arriving at a village settlers had allegedly
04:19destroyed, including the local school, and said armed men then blocked their vehicle and detained
04:25the group. Here's the part that stings. Khanna says the settlers called in the Israeli military,
04:32the IDF sided with the settlers, not with the Americans. His aide, Cameron Caskey, yes,
04:39the Parkland shooting survivor turned activist, says the group was held for more than an hour
04:44and had to appeal directly to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. Eventually, officers who
04:50appeared to be police intervened and let them go. Now, fairness matters here. The Israeli military
04:57tells a slightly different story. They say troops and police responded after getting a report of
05:04settlers blocking vehicles near Kirbit Zenuta, and that upon arrival, they dispersed the Israeli
05:10civilians and let the vehicles continue on. So, no denial that it happened, just a different framing
05:16of who resolved it and how fast. This isn't just a scary travel story. It's landing in the middle of
05:23a much
05:24bigger political moment. Israel's favorability among Democrats has cratered, from 59% back in 2018, down to just 22%
05:34this past May.
05:35Democratic primaries this cycle have already claimed incumbents seen as too pro-Israel. And Khanna? He didn't shy away from
05:44the moment.
05:45Asked point blank if this trip pushed him toward running for president, he said,
05:49I'm strongly considering it, and I'm more resolved to consider it after this trip. A U.S. lawmaker, detained by
05:58armed civilians in territory most of the world calls illegally occupied, walking away more convinced he should run the country.
06:07Whatever your politics, that's a headline you don't scroll past.
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