proIsrael

As rights advocates decry the detention of United States Congressman Ro Khanna by armed Israeli settlers, Israel and its allies are launching political attacks to discredit the progressive legislator.

Israeli officials have already ruled out apologising to Khanna or holding the settlers accountable. Instead, several have gone on the offensive against the congressman.

Khanna said he was travelling to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when armed settlers stopped his van for 20 minutes. The settlers were later joined by Israeli soldiers who continued to block the road.

The whole ordeal lasted more than an hour, according to Khanna, and was only resolved after he reached out to the US embassy in Israel.

On Sunday, Michael Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, appeared to blame Khanna for the mistreatment he received, saying that the California Democrat had failed to coordinate his trip with the Israeli government.

“He decided to coordinate his trip not with Israel, but with Palestinian activists and with J Street,” Leiter told CBS News, referencing a Jewish nonprofit.

Leiter went on to claim, without evidence, that Khanna may have waited to release his video of Wednesday’s incident to distract from his support for politician Graham Platner.

Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine on Friday amid sexual misconduct allegations. Khanna published his video on Saturday.

“Maybe this had more something to do with his support of Graham Platner beforehand and the difficulties he had with that, and trying to shift the focus to something else. Perhaps? I’m asking a question,” Leiter said.

Khanna is not backing down, however. He said he did inform Israel of his travel and has called for the arrest of settlers who held up his van.

Khanna responds

The Israeli military has disputed Khanna’s version of the events, saying that it “dispersed” civilians who were blocking the road. But in an appearance on Sunday with NBC News, Khanna refuted that account.

“The [Israeli military] is lying,” Khanna said.

“What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4s [rifles], kicking the tyres of our van, laughing at us, mocking at us, videotaping us.”

He added that the Israeli military participated in blocking their path and detaining them.

“How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?” Khanna said.

Pro-Israel politicians, however, claimed that Khanna provoked his own detention by carrying out a political stunt.

“Sounds like another plea for publicity. Anything to get in front of the camera. Why else would you be there? It isn’t your country,” Republican Congressman Greg Murphy wrote in a social media post.

Critics were quick to point out that Murphy’s first trip as part of a congressional delegation was to Israel.

Khanna also responded to Murphy, urging him to be on “Team America” and join the push for any settlers and soldiers who mistreat US citizens to face consequences.

“I would be calling for that if you had been in our shoes,” Khanna said.

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson was among those who came to Khanna’s defence. He criticised Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, for failing to speak out about the incident.

“An American member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman,” Carlson wrote on the social media platform X.

“It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America.”

Still, many pro-Israel figures in the US expressed scepticism about Khanna’s experience. David Friedman, a former US envoy to Israel, accused Khanna of “self-victimization”.

Friedman argued, without evidence, that Khanna had purposely entered a restricted zone to provoke the incident.

“As was entirely predictable, he was asked a few questions and sent on his way. But he got the photo op and all he needed for his pre-conceived false narrative,” Friedman said in a social media post. “Well played Ro.”

Several other pro-Israel advocates echoed that take.

Attacks on US citizens

Israel’s military and settler presence in the occupied West Bank is illegal under international law.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza, is unlawful.

“Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the top United Nations tribunal said.

Israeli settlers – often under the protection of the Israeli military – regularly attack Palestinian communities in the West Bank, ransacking farms and property and assaulting people who come in their way. That includes Americans.

One year ago, for instance, Israeli settlers beat 20-year-old US citizen Sayfollah Musallet to death.

Three weeks later, another American citizen, a father of five from Chicago named Khamis Ayyad, was also killed in a settler attack.

No suspects have been charged with crimes after the two attacks.

Despite well-documented abuses against US citizens, Israel was added to the US visa waiver programme in 2023, allowing Israelis to travel visa-free to the US.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US military aid in history, having received more than $21bn in the last two years alone.

Ever since leading pro-Israel lobby financier Sheldon Adelson intervened in the 2016 election heavily in favour of Donald Trump, the now-president’s Middle East policies (if you can even call them that) have become more and more openly in favour of the Zionist state.

To call casino tycoon Adelson an “Israel first” financier is misleading, as it implies that he has second, third and fourth priorities. With a net worth of almost $34 billion at his disposal, though, his one and only cause is Israel, so “Israel only” financier would be a more accurate description.

Adelson has ploughed hundreds of millions of dollars into funding anti-Palestinian groups. He has, for example, donated a reported $410 million to Birthright Israel, a pro-Israel propaganda organisation which takes young Jews on brainwashing tours to occupied Palestine, inculcating in them the idea that the country forms part of their “birthright”.

Although nobody should delude themselves that such a huge amount of money does not have the intended effect on many impressionable young people, money isn’t everything and, thankfully, largely left-wing and liberal Jews are increasingly rejecting Israel. Last year, media outlets reported a number of walk-outs from Birthright tours, with participants reacting against the heavy-handed propaganda that always forms the basis of such trips.

READ: US comedian Roseanne, shunned since racist tweet, visits Israel

Left-wing and anti-Zionist Jews have for many years now been organising against Birthright, even putting on a “Birthwrong” tour celebrating diasporic Jewish life in ancestral Jewish homelands, such as Spain, France, Brazil, Germany, the USA and Britain.

Such efforts are now paying off. Birthright walk-outs are part of a broader trend in which Israel is haemorrhaging support from the base of the Democratic Party in the US. Once upon a time, Sheldon Adelson funded the Democrats. However, in a 2012 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (the in-house organ of America’s billionaire business class), Adelson explained: “I didn’t leave the Democrats. They left me.” In that article it emerged that the main, if not the only, reason he switched his substantial financial support from the Democrats to the Republicans was that the Democrats’ base is now largely hostile to Israeli war crimes and apartheid.

Since then, Adelson has apparently made it his mission in life to fund the worst of the worst right-wing Republicans. As the late, lamented website Gawker reported, “In 2012 he spent $20 million supporting Newt Gingrich, nearly derailing [Mitt] Romney’s primary run.”

President Donald Trump answers questions during a meeting with military leaders in the Cabinet Room on 23 October, 2018 in Washington [Win McNamee/Getty Images]

During the course of the race for the 2016 White House, every Republican candidate did their best to net Adelson’s support and, of course, his money. Marco Rubio was reportedly calling Adelson every other week at one stage, and “when Jeb Bush hired a foreign policy advisor who was critical of Israel’s diplomatic actions, Adelson forced Bush to issue an apology.”

With President Donald Trump now leading the most anti-Palestinian White House of all time, it’s easy to forget that at one stage, his non-interventionist instincts in matters of foreign policy seemed, for a brief moment, to extend even to Palestine. That’s when Adelson started to plough cash onto the Trump bandwagon and ended up being Trump’s number-one backer. The White House is now more pro-Israel than ever, with each new advisor seemingly more fanatically Zionist than the last.

READ: Media hypocrisy puts pressure on Arabs but not Israeli activists

The Trump-appointed US Ambassador to Israel not only tolerates illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for example, but also actively funds them out of his own money. Trump has also followed through on a promise to Adelson to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the face of international law, which still considers the latter to be an occupied city, the annexation of which by Israel is illegal.

While the pro-Israel lobby seems to have the White House sewn up for now, its propagandists look at the new crop of progressive and left-wing Democrats in Congress with some trepidation, for Israel no longer has the universal, bipartisan support in the House and Senate that it once had. This week, news emerged that its lobby has even had to establish a new group, aiming to shore up its floundering support among Democrats.

“Democratic Majority for Israel” is supposedly set to make the “progressive case for Israel”. The fact that such a move has had to be made now is a serious indication of how much US support for Israel has slipped. Indeed, in the secretly filmed words of Eric Gallagher, a leading “liberal” pro-Israel lobbyist when he referred to the lobby’s flagship organisation, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: “The foundation that AIPAC sat on is rotting… There used to be actual widespread public support for Israel in the United States. So I don’t think that AIPAC is going to remain as influential as it is.”

READ: How AIPAC-Israel agenda became US priority

One establishment policy wonk conceded this week that the passage of a bill through the Senate targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, while seemingly a victory for Israel, was “actually a pretty significant loss. Because only one serious presidential candidate voted for it.”

Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, two corporate Democrats who have thrown their hats into the presidential ring for 2020, both failed to show up for the vote, despite speaking at previous AIPAC policy conferences. Even they don’t want to enrage their support base, much of which is likely to opt for Bernie Sanders should he decide to run again.

With the situation in Congress changing rapidly, the pro-Israel lobby is going for broke to take advantage of its position in the White House while it lasts.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

The race pitting a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump against Congressman Thomas Massie, a rare Republican critic of Israel, has become the most expensive House of Representatives primary contest in the history of the United States.

The avalanche of spending, totalling more than $34m by Monday, according to official records, highlights the significance of the elections that could oust one of the few Republican opponents to the war with Iran.

In the final stretch of the campaign ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Massie has sought to highlight the oversized role of pro-Israel groups – including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – in the race.

He said the election will be a “referendum on foreign policy” and whether pro-Israel lobby groups will be able to “bully” members of Congress.

“You can tell that I’m ahead in the polls, and they’re desperate,” Massie told ABC News on Sunday.

“That’s why they’re sending the secretary of war to my district tomorrow. That’s why the president’s losing sleep and tweeting about this. That’s why AIPAC has dumped another $3m into my race this weekend.”

Trump has been incessantly bashing Massie on social media, and in an unusual move, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has travelled to Kentucky to campaign for Ed Gallrein, the Navy SEAL veteran challenging the congressman.

Massie has been critical of the unconditional US military aid to Israel and of the country’s abuses in Gaza and Lebanon. He has also helped spearhead the push for the release of government files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The money

Despite the intensity of the race, the candidates have not raised record amounts of money themselves.

The bulk of the spending, more than $25.8m, has come from outside groups, known as super political action committees (super PACs).

Super PACs are usually used by special interest groups to spend heavily to oppose or support a candidate without the constraints of legal limits on direct campaign contributions.

Pro-Israel groups and donors have played a central role in the flood of funds and ads directed against Massie, with three groups linked to them spending more than $15.5m in the race, Federal Election Commission (FEC) data shows.

United Democracy Project (UDP), AIPAC’s election arm, has spent more than $4.1m.

The RJC Victory Fund, which is affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition, came in with around $3.9m.

MAGA KY has been the largest spender, at $7.5m.

The PAC’s finances have not been made fully public. But available records show that one of the group’s top funders is Paul Singer, a pro-Israel billionaire investor who has also made the largest individual donation to UDP over the past year – $2.5m.

MAGA KY also received funds from Preserve America PAC, a group linked to Israeli-American megadonor Miriam Adelson.

Details of the finances of Preserve America PAC remain unclear for this election cycle. But Adelson donated $106m to the PAC in 2024 to help elect Trump as president.

Trump has openly admitted that Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson have influenced his Middle East policies.

Before the race in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District, the most expensive House primary was the 2024 election that ousted then-Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman, in which pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, were also the largest spenders.

The third most expensive primary also involved AIPAC and its pro-Israel allies, who succeeded in helping defeat progressive Congresswoman Cori Bush in 2024.

The Trump factor

Beyond the millions of dollars in pro-Israel spending, Massie needs to survive another potent force in Republican politics – Trump’s wrath.

The US president has all but purged the party of lawmakers who have disagreed with him on major issues.

Most recently, Senator Bill Cassidy – who voted to convict Trump after the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot – lost his primary to a challenger backed by the US president.

Trump is actively campaigning against Massie. In less than 24 hours between Sunday and Monday, the US president fired off three social media posts berating the congressman, calling him “weak”, “pathetic” and a “bum”.

“The worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party is Thomas Massie,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday. “He is an obstructionist and a fool. Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America!”

However, Massie appears to have a few advantages that other Republican dissidents lacked.

Over the years, the congressman has built a reputation as a combative, principled libertarian and has gained popularity among right-wing commentators.

His campaign directly raised $5.5m, significantly more than Gallrein’s $3.1m, while also receiving outside support from pro-gun rights and libertarian PACs.

Massie has also been endorsed by some of his Republican colleagues, including Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, an outspoken right-wing lawmaker.

And due to the involvement of pro-Israel groups, Massie’s supporters are arguing that the race is not all about Trump, who remains popular amongst Republican voters.

“Why does Trump hate Massie? Is the congressman a secret liberal? Not at all,” right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson said in his newsletter on Monday.

“Unlike nearly everyone else in the Republican Party, Massie has refused to go along with the White House’s abandonment of the America First principles that got the president elected. He is one of the few honest people in politics. Everyone who cares about our country should root for him.”