Rep. Ro Khanna is using anti-Israel rhetoric to elevate his profile

The massively wealthy leftist is trying to position himself as a potential Democrat presidential nominee and needs a distraction from his money.

Andrea Widburg | AM Thinker | July 12, 2026

Ro Khanna. By Ro Khanna – X.com, Public Domain, Wikipedia

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Crazifornia), who has dreams of becoming the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nominee,  traveled to an imaginary country called “Palestine,” and then publicly claimed that a real nation—Israel—wrongfully detained him. Israel quickly set the record straight, but Khanna’s viciously slanted narrative is getting traction.

Rohit “Ro” Khanna is a Bernie Sanders leftist who describes himself as a “progressive capitalist.” What this seems to boil down to is that he’s allowed to be fabulously wealthy while ordinary Americans are not. It’s the same theory that works for people like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Shockingly, Khanna is a University of Chicago econ grad. Somewhere, Milton Friedman weeps.

Khanna, who holds a Yale law degree, spent only a few years in the private sector. However, ironically, he worked for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a firm known for helping Silicon Valley entrepreneurs become very rich. Young lawyers working at these firms make good salaries, but they don’t become millionaires. The bulk of Khanna’s career, though, has been spent working for the government or holding political office. In theory, public servants don’t become millionaires either.

Nevertheless, Khanna has a rich man’s lifestyle. He married a wealthy woman (an auto parts heiress), who’s vastly increased her and their minor children’s wealth doing the same things that Khanna routinely decries as a politician. The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr did a deep dive into the family’s extraordinary wealth:

An analysis of Khanna’s financial disclosures reveals his gilded life is enriched by the same sort of investment vehicles that Khanna has said he has a “moral” duty to oppose and that Khanna’s family is a beneficiary of the “New Gilded Age” he condemns.

[snip]

In 2024, Khanna’s financial disclosures clocked in at 333 pages of non-text-searchable tables, listing over 3,000 individual assets owned by him, his wife, and his children, with each asset having ticked one of 13 available boxes corresponding to an asset valuation range. Put together, those assets are worth anywhere from $103 million to more than $340 million, according to a Free Beacon review. It’s possible that the net worth of Khanna’s nuclear family could far exceed $340 million.

You really need to read Kerr’s report to understand Khanna’s “wealth for me but not for thee” hypocrisy, including his tolerance for the (legal) market-manipulation tactics his family can employ.

As a multi-millionaire who isn’t using his wealth like Neville Singham or the Soros men to fund America’s downfall, Khanna needs a “hook” for his planned presidential run. For any leftist politician today, attacking Israel is the easiest hook of all.

Armed with the “Israel is evil” plan, Khanna was soon able to tweet out that the Israeli government treated him and his team with tremendous evilness. According to him, gun-wielding evil Israeli settlers, with support from equally evil IDF troops, dared to detain him and his team. Yup, he was detained, so he instantly went into threat mode against evil Israel:

According to PM Netanyahu, this was anything but a massive international incident. Instead, the IDF quickly disbursed some edgy young people affected by the October 7 attack. Moreover, said Bibi, those who detained Khanna will be dealt with in compliance with the law:

As a practical matter, Khanna was part of a panel laughing at the very idea of condemning October 7, so his presence near the West Bank should rightly be regarded as a security risk for Israel. Ynet has a good analysis of how Khanna is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel as he seeks greater political power. Basically, Khanna intends to ride this narrative the way Biden rode Charlottesville straight into the White House, and both men are equally full of bovine fecal matter.

The last time a socialist party rode to power on the back of Jew hatred, it ended badly for the Jews, but also for the rest of the world, not to mention 5.3 million German deaths, not including the six million Jews these same socialists slaughtered.

Today’s Democrat Socialists (which includes just about every Democrat except for John Fetterman), in their lust for power, are playing with fire. This will not end well if the American people, through the ballot box, do not stop this madness right now.

UPDATE: Unbeknownst to me, not long after I published this post, Albert Aaron posted on Facebook, consolidating all the available (and most recent) information about Khanna’s little stunt:

Here is the full text:

I received a lot of questions about the Ro Khanna incident and I want to provide an update with additional information that came out today. People also asked me for sources so I will try to be more deliberate with my sourcing for this one.

Based on everything I reviewed, here’s what happened:

1. According to Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli Embassy reached out to Ro Khanna when they learned that he was going to Israel in order to coordinate a trip. Khanna ignored Israel’s request (Source: Face the Nation). He instead coordinated the trip without Israel’s knowledge and with a left-leaning organization named “Breaking the Silence” (Source: Jerusalem Post). The group advocates for an effective displacement of Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Now, what specifically happened on the ground.

2. While in Area C, Ro Khanna entered a Closed Military Zone (CMZ). NBC confirmed this and Khanna’s trip organizer from Breaking the Silence did not dispute this fact to the Jerusalem Post. According to the Israeli government, which controls Area C, “when an area is formally declared a closed military zone, Israeli military orders generally prohibit entry or presence without permission from the military commander…. A foreign visitor (including an American or European citizen) who enters a CMZ without permission can potentially be removed, detained for questioning, fined, or face other legal consequences depending on circumstances.”

So according to this, Ro Khanna acted contrary to Israeli military regulations governing closed military zones and against diplomatic norms of a U.S. congressman.

3. It was at that point, that local civilian guards saw a bus in a CMZ area, and took matters into their own hands by stopping the bus and calling up the IDF. Israeli officials criticized this intervention by local civilians, with Prime Minister Netanyahu referring to them as “vigilantes.” Jerusalem Post also cited Israeli officials who said that initial stop by the local guards was a “failure on the Israeli side,” implying that the initial stop by local civilians was outside of their jurisdiction. Nevertheless, these local guards immediately called the IDF according to numerous sources, including Ro Khanna’s own account. The IDF arrived promptly within 20 minutes.

4. When the IDF arrived, they began to investigate. According to the Jerusalem Post report, at this point, the people on Khanna’s bus also called the Israeli police to resolve the dispute. The precise division of authority between the two agencies at this point was not publicly explained.

The New York Times added this: “Mr. Khanna assumed the soldiers were there to help him pass. Instead, the soldiers smoked cigarettes, chatted with the men.” Khanna adds, “I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life.”

I could not decipher if it was the female soldiers smoking cigarettes, their conversation with the men, or both that made Khanna feel “powerless,” based on the New York Times reporting. [Yes, I’m kidding.]

5. About an hour later from the start of the incident, Israel’s police arrived. “Israel Police told NBC News that it responded to a report that a group was blocking a route inside a ‘closed military zone’ [CMZ] that’s technically controlled by the Israel Defense Forces.” [it should be noted that for this particular incident, it appears that the IDF controls the military zone, while the Israeli police controls the traffic and detention matters.]

6. The police also added that they reviewed camera footage and added this about the group leader, likely a reference to Breaking the Silence activist. “A review of body-worn camera footage confirms that the group leader was explicitly warned by officers, as this was not his first time violating the Closed Military Zone order,” police said. “He was issued a final warning that any future violations would result in immediate arrest.” (Source: NBC)

About an hour and some minutes later, local police cleared the area, and Khanna continued on his way. These are the facts. That is exactly how it went down on Wednesday. With sources.

But what happened after that is important too.

7. Ro Khanna sat on the story for several days and coordinated with major networks in the United States to provide an incomplete picture of what happened. He did not disclose, for instance, that he himself was acting outside of military laws by being inside a CMZ. Khanna also described the incident to networks as him being held at gunpoint. While militarily personnel were armed because that is the nature of military personnel in closed military zones, there is absolutely no evidence that firearms were ever pointed at anyone or that anyone was threatened with anything gun-related.

8. In my view, these deliberate material omissions and egregious overstatements by Khanna were designed to paint him as a victim of something (I’m not sure what exactly) instead of stating the facts about exactly what happened. For instance, Khanna specifically didn’t report to any of the networks in his initial media blitz that he was in a restricted area controlled by Israel pulling a stunt against Israel. Aside for NBC, none of the networks disclosed that important fact. Khanna also fundraised off of this media blitz.

9. Another piece of information to have emerged from this story is that Khanna went on the trip with his new aide, a democratic socialist Cameron Kasky (in the photograph below). Kasky is a Columbia University dropout who had entered New York’s congressional race to replace Jerry Nadler (my district in NYC) and dropped out fairly quickly because he was a terrible candidate. His primary message was effectively that he has a deep hatred for Israel. For instance, he likened Israelis fighting in the Gaza war to mass shooters on high school campuses, and blamed the United States for both.

Here is how he framed it: “What do the mass shooting at my high school in Parkland and the mass killings of children and adults in Gaza have in common? America is responsible.”

10. Most importantly, as I mentioned yesterday and as was repeated by the ambassador today, the trip’s timeline and intent are strange. The trip occurred shortly after Graham Platner’s campaign collapsed as a result of credible rape allegations. Ro Khanna was one of Platner’s most important supporters and campaigned with him in June, shortly before Platner won his primary. It is also peculiar that Khanna chose the Middle East, and not the United States, as the setting from which to announce his candidacy. Why are democratic socialists and left-leaning candidates so focused on what Israelis are doing in the Middle East and not on their own constituents in the United States?

So that’s what happened.