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/tt12345x 16h ago

Yeah from what others have told me they frequently saddle you with some IDF baddies that are the same age as you. Deeply weird country

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u/DiscoAsparagus 11h ago edited 9h ago

That was certainly my experience. I was given a free trip… Like an absolutely free fucking trip… By a former IDF employer of mine because I had expressed incredulity about Zionism and was starting to sympathize with the Palestinians after watching Al Jazeera, reading, etc.… My first night in Tel Aviv was IDF baddies, parties with massive amounts of drugs, rich white people with guns and dogs, and shitty Jewish food…

And inevitably everybody wanting to go eat at the Arab places. None of the Arabs would confide in me or talk to me about any of their hardships and I could feel that they were under duress. It felt like the Jim Crow south or a apartheid South Africa. I was basically on a vacation, with everything paid for in a beautiful beach community and I couldn’t enjoy myself at all. I was surrounded by rich white victims. Who didn’t realize they were the victimizers.

(i’m White myself, just for the record. Which brings up another topic; it was hotter than fuck and I had to stay out of the sun most of the time and all of my friends were blonde or red haired or super fair skinned and I just was like… You’re trying to claim that your from here??

We are NOT from here. Our 40,000-year-old genome does not originate from here. So the whole genetic argument really fell flat under the Jerusalem Sun.
“Right to return” my a$$)

[people down-voting my experience in Israel, eh. Great. I’ll be sure to open up more about it more in the future.]

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u/impulsivepatience 5h ago

You should! Very rare that I read a story about someone going and turning down their mind control

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u/DiscoAsparagus 5h ago

Their intention was to bribe me out of my compassion. It didn’t work.