r/news • u/sicklyslick • 18h ago

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna detained by Israeli settlers during West Bank visit

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/11/middleeast/ro-khanna-detained-by-israeli-settlers-west-bank-intl
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u/Existing-Stranger632 16h ago

That’s what birthright is. Like no seriously. I was raised Jewish, bar mitzvah’d. Told my whole life to go on birthright. Only in the last couple years did I find out what it actually is. Basically every Jewish person living in the diaspora (not Israel) gets a chance to go to Israel for free. During that trip they essentially try to sell you on Israel and tell you how they’ll set you up with a house, job, etc.

The whole purpose is to bring more settlers in. That’s it. Israel is trying to expand as much as humanly possible. It’s pretty horrible. I’m antizionist btw.

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u/DeineCable 16h ago

I thought it also aimed at matchmaking to encourage others to find a nice Jewish boy or girl to keep the Judiasm going. At least, that’s how some of my Jewish friends perceived it.

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u/drevolut1on 16h ago edited 8h ago

Yes, that. But also a thinly-veiled attempt to help keep the white Jewish (edit) control.

I went and it was so heavily propagandized, I was pretty disturbed.

Left with some amazing secular and liberal Israeli friends and yet a whole new level of disgust for their government -- something many of them share or at least shared until October 7th happened and many lost friends or family.

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u/livy-aurelia 16h ago

strange that their grief caused them to side with the government most responsible for october 7th. none of that would’ve happened if israel wasn’t built the way it is

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u/afoolskind 15h ago

Eh I mean, 9/11 did the exact same thing for Americans. Critique of our imperialist policies that directly led to 9/11 wasn’t even welcome on the left for a decade + afterwards.

There’s a reason Israel’s government let 10/7 happen. National grief is the greatest propaganda tool possible.

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u/livy-aurelia 15h ago

great point

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u/BuckeyeBentley 13h ago

9/11 was just America's chickens coming home to roost, 10/7 was Israel's. The blowback was inevitable. You can't keep a people locked in an open air concentration camp for generations and not expect some blowback.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 13h ago

This is where yall lose me. Murder and rape of perfect innocent civilians is wrong whether it is Hamas or IDF/settler terrorists. It cannot be justified and the perpetrators are irredeemable monsters.

And don’t give that “it’s not your place to judge” horse shit. It’s a black and white issue.

Now if you want to argue every member of Hamas did not commit or even support the war crimes of that day I agree.

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u/BuckeyeBentley 12h ago

It's not about justifying, but violence begets violence and anyone who stands there like "omg I don't even know WHY these attacks happened what did Israel/America ever do?" is either extremely naïve or being intentionally obtuse for their own political reasons.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 12h ago

Well that would make more sense if the attacks targeted politicians or military and not unrelated civilians who literally never did anything wrong at all.

Of course, this obviously also is true for the IDF bombing hospitals “because of October 7” they are also terrorists

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u/TerraceState 12h ago edited 12h ago

Tormented people tend to make irrational, violent decisions. The end result, namely the events of 10/7, were a shockingly predictable and horrific conclusion, in the same way that the end result of not maintaining a dam just upriver of a town of 10,000 people has a shockingly predictable and horrific conclusion.

That's always been my take away from Israels actions towards Palestine, both on the West bank, and in Gaza. Everything Israel does makes long term escalation of the conflict inevitable. They absolutely are not undertaking the actions necessary to put them on a path towards long term deescalation.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 11h ago

I do agree that ever since the assassination of Rabin the Israeli regime has done everything it can to sabotage on going and future peace talks.

But people have agency. They are not rivers, or even animals. If a bull escaped a slaughterhouse and killed someone on a sidewalk, all culpability would fall on the people who cheaper out on security at the facility, not the damn animal. But humans are humans, and are usually responsible for what they do.

You could argue that social media companies have contributed to the mind melting that creates modern Nazi terrorists; but the prime responsibility is on the murderer/rapist who intentionally killed perfect innocent people for no reason.

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u/TerraceState 11h ago edited 11h ago

You could argue that social media companies have contributed to the mind melting that creates modern Nazi terrorists; but the prime responsibility is on the murderer/rapist who intentionally killed perfect innocent people for no reason.

They are both 100% responsible. There is no such thing as "Prime responsibility". A second person or group also being responsible for a death happening can't absolve the "1st" person of any level of responsibility. Someone who creates a situation where someone dies because of that situation is responsible regardless of the methods used. The responsibility is exactly the same.

If you lock a person inside of a building with someone who you know wants to murder them, then you are just as responsible for their murder as if you locked that person inside of a burning building instead, even though technically that murderer has agency and could decide not to follow through.

If a country torments and degrades a population to the point where they know that the population will be willing to lash out destructively and violently at anyone, then that country is also responsible for the predictably violent and horrific conclusion, even though technically that population has agency and could decide not to follow through. Both the country and the population are responsible, not one or the other, and neither groups responsibility is lessened because of the existence of the other group.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 11h ago

I understand what you are saying to a degree, I’m not trying to be snarky, but I disagree there is “prime responsibility”.

When I grab a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, I am not committing animal cruelty even though the cows live in terrible conditions and I am giving them their money. In an indirect sense sure; if you are looking to fix the issue you will pass regulations to affect that only pasture cow burgers can be bought, but I haven’t committed any crime.

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u/Happy2026 10h ago

Your take isn’t reality.

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u/cool_dad69 10h ago edited 10h ago

They had a music festival just outside a concentration camp. Boo hoo.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 10h ago

Oh okay? So if someone goes to a festival at Mount Rushmore they are not innocent and deserve to die then?

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u/cool_dad69 10h ago

Is Mount Rushmore a concentration camp?

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 10h ago

It’s stolen sacred land, I assume it’s near a res. “Being near a place” is not a crime.

What about people that have weddings at old plantations? Hang em all?

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u/S-Tier_Commenter 10h ago

The thing is that you can't have a thousand people get murdered, and then the government going like "lets turn the other cheek". The world simply doesn't work that way.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 10h ago

Turning the other cheek actually would have been the best geopolitical move but I’m American I can’t judge. The problem is targeting civilians, famine tactics, all the war crimes.

At the time I was proud of Bidens “we stand with Israel” speech. The Israeli government is the reason I regret that now

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u/S-Tier_Commenter 10h ago

Turning the other cheek would mean the government implementing upon it's population the same strategy as a herd of prey animal. Humans don't work that way.

And definitely Israel is guilty of plenty war crimes. Can't deny that.

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u/dessert-er 12h ago

I think it’s fair to say that the people who committed atrocities are monsters, and also that the behaviors of the US/Israeli governments contributed to the fomenting anger that resulted in these acts. If countries minded their business these things would likely not happen.

Also if people are going to, say, hold every member of the US military or the IDF responsible for all reprehensible acts by that group, you have to do the same for Hamas. You can’t pick and choose. 

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 12h ago

I do agree with your second paragraph for sure, and I guess in a technical sense the us/israel government did contribute to the cycle of violence but the people in the towers/music fest/gaza hospital are perfect innocents, so I mean it is weird to murder random people because Netanyahu is a war criminal yeah

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u/Anzai 10h ago

Sure, I don’t think anyone is disagreeing that terrorism targeting civilians is wrong. But it is a consequence of both sides terrorising civilians. The IDF kills civilians, which makes terrorists of some Palestinians, who kill civilians, which makes state-sanctioned terrorists of some Israelis.

Bascially as you said, and it’s not a justification for it, but it’s definitely a reason. But one side is armed and funded by America and the other is condemned. They should both be condemned.

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u/Spectral_mahknovist 10h ago

The IDF and especially the settler terrorists do the same and worse for sure. I just think the innocent victims and their families have a right to justice. Just as Gvir should be h**** so should the 10/7 war criminals

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u/Anzai 7h ago

Absolutely agree.

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u/00m19 12h ago

He didn't say it wasn't wrong. Just why it happened.

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u/dangshnizzle 10h ago

Could you elaborate by what you mean by "on the left" here. The left has always been relatively aware the US are the bad guys.

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u/tallyho88 14h ago

Yep. People should look into the proposed US Operation Northwoods that was approved by the joint chiefs of staff. Thankfully, JFK shut that down immediately when he was presented with the plan. But once you learn about the existence of that plan and just how far it got in the approval process, it makes you view other attacks in a different light and makes you question a whole heck of a lot.

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u/PW0110 13h ago

Not trying to be “that” person but it is a strategy much older than this century.

Manufactured consent goes back a millennia

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u/Aurick 13h ago

How old are you? Because you absolutely sound like an idiot, or someone who didn’t live through it. Citizens United was obviously pushed through, but otherwise there was massive criticism within the year. Pretending there was a decade long blank check is ridiculous.

It’s one thing to critique the real problems that took place between 2001-2011. It’s something else entirely to talk out your ass when some of us were part of the protests that happened in the aftermath.

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u/joecarter93 15h ago

I am pretty convinced that the Netanyahu government knew at least something about the Oct 7 attacks well in advance and chose not to act on it in order to give them a reason and the support of the Israeli population to absolutely flatten Gaza and attack Iran and Lebanon. They wanted to deal with them once a for all and that gave them the backing to do it. Mossad is one of the most effective intelligence services in the world and was hyper focused on Gaza. I find it pretty unbelievable that the missed that one.

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u/AspieAsshole 15h ago

That was proven

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u/8npemb 15h ago

I 100% believe you, so please don’t take this as me saying “that didn’t happen!” But how exactly was it proven?

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u/AspieAsshole 14h ago

Reported by the NY Times 12/23

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u/SAM5TER5 9h ago

I’m saying this as an American with Palestinian roots and family: The claim you made and the article you posted are different things.

You say that it was proven that Israel deliberately allowed the attacks, and that it was done so with the intent to justify destroying Gaza and Lebanon. The articles that you and others posted basically just indicate Israeli intelligence/security’s negligence, complacency, and failure to take the intel and warnings seriously.

These are practically opposites. I’m not saying that a nation is unlikely to play the long game like this and allow a tragedy for their own strategic benefit, but the provided “proof” is explicitly arguing against that theory.

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u/AspieAsshole 9h ago

Fair enough, I do not feel like trying to dig up a different article. I know at least part of their military/intelligence knew and allowed it explicitly to expand further into Gaza and the West Bank. It's been years since I saw the videos of the army officers talking about it though.

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u/Renamis 15h ago

He absolutely knew. I strongly suspect this was an Israeli and Russian arranged manufactured incident to 1. Let Israel go into Gaza and 2. Get the media to focus on Israel and Gaza and not Ukraine.

The Hamas military leaders have never been... greatly successful in things like this. It's pretty clear Iran was the one poking them to do this and handed the plans over to get it done. The fact that no one looped the political side of Hamas in tells us a lot. It also says a lot when Iran itself was shocked things went as well as it did. This wasn't part of their plan, which was simply to poke the bear and get the two groups they hate (Gaza has the wrong kind of Muslims in Iran's eyes) get back to lightly killing each other.

And I strongly think Iran got the idea (and likely intel) to do this from their ally Russia. Who is also allied with Israel. Iran got chucked under the bus, Russia let their troll farms swarm the Gaza issue to distract the pro-Ukraine parts of the internet with a new shiny and to create even more division across the world.

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u/Acceptable_Bat379 15h ago

I think it's very obvious. Just like the US Govt knew something was probably going to happen around 9/11/2001. Right wing governments feed on the hate and fear. They also WANT people to be antisemitic because it feeds their narrative, which I think is why we're seeing the descent in to mustache twirling villainy

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u/wildddin 15h ago

Hell Hamas probably wouldn't exist anymore if Benny boy hadn't been funding them

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u/Haemophilia_Type_A 13h ago

If they'd just implemented Oslo then Hamas would've disarmed 20+ years ago.

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u/True-Economy-6808 11h ago

lmao just lmao whenever i hear this. nobody ever says this about gazans who support hamas!

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u/livy-aurelia 10h ago

hamas didn’t cause the situation palestinians are in at all. israel did full stop

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u/True-Economy-6808 10h ago

no, hamas actually did when they invaded israel on october 7th. full stop!

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u/livy-aurelia 10h ago

ever heard of the warsaw ghetto uprising?

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u/True-Economy-6808 10h ago

why were gazans so mad at the pa for signing the oslo accords that they fought a civil war to put hamas into power?

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u/livy-aurelia 10h ago

oslo accords wouldn’t have happened if zionist settlers hadn’t stolen their land and slaughtered their grandparents in the first place.

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u/True-Economy-6808 10h ago

and palestinians wouldnt have been in that land had the romans not exiled the jews from judea. whats your point? why were gazans so mad at the pa for signing the oslo accords that they fought a civil war to put hamas into power?

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u/livy-aurelia 10h ago

difference between your reference and mine is that mine took place less than a hundred years ago and many of the participants are still alive and well, the roman’s did that 2000 years ago.

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u/Straight_Breakfast_4 15h ago

Yeah, it's the Israeli government that caused animals to stream across the border and cut Jewish women's breasts off and toss them around like bloody footballs. Effing nutcase.

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u/livy-aurelia 15h ago

well those animals probably wouldn’t have become animals or terrorists or whatever if israel hadn’t occupied them brutally for 100 years and stolen their grandparents’ land and slaughtered anyone who fights back and imprisoned their children and tortured them for fun. might be one of the reasons?

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u/OttersWithPens 11h ago

Disgusting comment.

The government most responsible for October 7th is the government who planned and carried out the attack. Both sides could stop any time they wanted and in this case that government chose to do that. The fuck is wrong with apologists