Throughout my life, neither Israelis nor Palestinians were portrayed as "real persons" to Americans. They were assigned roles in a morality play; now those roles are reversed.
If it proves to be significant (not assured), Khanna's trip will have shown Americans something they've rarely seen: bullying behavior by Israelis outside the context of combat against sworn enemies.
Meeting hostage families and the Druze, and learning about relief efforts, might have added "balance," but nothing new. Israeli narratives are well-known in this country.
Mr. Kowaz writes that he has been a critic of the behavior Khanna spotlights, just as Israeli organizations called out the same prison conditions Nicholas Kristof later reported.
We Americans are then left asking, "So why haven't things changed? Why do we continue to support a government that acts with so little regard to our values and interests?" That explains Khanna's itinerary to me.
"Everyone is just a tool." That's really the essence of Silicon Valley politics. We saw it with Saikat Chakrabarti's congress run too. As shallow and canned as a venture capital funding pitch.
Given the conspiracies in Islamic States that Israel caused Egypt's defeat to Argentina is it possible that influential sponsors like Qatar told FIFA to appoint a Muslim as a referee for Argentina-England?
I live in Northern California. This is par for the course for Khanna. He’s very skilled at setting up situations like this that he can then use for publicity. Recently he reached out to the Bay Area Jewish coalition (BAJC) for a meeting; they reluctantly accepted, asking and receiving from Khanna’s staff a written commitment that the meeting would be confidential, because they feared it would be used by him for publicity as “outreach to the Jewish community”, while he simultaneously harms local Jewish interests with his one sided simplistic demon portrayal of Israel as described in this piece. Right after this meeting, Khanna broke the agreement and publicized it, after getting an endorsement from “TrackAIPAC”, an anti AIPAC group. He lied to BAJC and used them to claim he supports the Jewish community with this meeting that he agreed to not publicize.
This is his MO. Use people, groups to advance his political ambition. I also have personal anecdotes from people in the area who have interacted with his campaigns that confirm he’s this kind of person.
1. ‘According to the Israeli organizers, he was offered a meeting with freed hostages and declined.’ Why should any decent person or well-wisher of Israel insult the hostages, both dead and alive, by giving the government of 7 October a publicity stunt?
2. ‘Palestinian organizers planned the trip to show him a specific perspective, and they succeeded.’ ‘No Israeli is shown as a real person.’ Khanna was in the West Bank with, i.a., Nadav Weiman, whom he has still retweeted. Do the members of Shovrim Shtika not count as Israelis? Do you have to yell at a hostage in a Knesset committee, like Almog Cohen, to count? ‘Khanna built a trip to make sure he was never in a room with any of them.’ I take it isn't enough to be in the same convoy?
3. ‘In his version of the West Bank, not a single Palestinian makes a choice.’ Obviously Palestinians have the option of choosing armed violence, which presumably you and I both think makes things worse. And they have the option of apathy or submission. What do you think a Palestinian in the West Bank can do to make things better? Vote or stand in the PA’s regular elections? Participate in the politics of the country that has power of life and death over them? Write in their bantustan’s notably free press?
Eli, I think the structural point buried inside “two Americans, one Wednesday” is the real essay.
The difference between Khanna and Emanuel isn’t simply courage versus cowardice, or honesty versus spin. It’s what each man built into the architecture of his criticism.
Khanna controlled the itinerary, controlled the camera, and departed before anyone he criticized could answer back. Emanuel stood in a room in Tel Aviv, in Hebrew, before people who could challenge him immediately, quote him back next week, or simply stop returning his calls.
One model of criticism contains a feedback loop. The other doesn’t.
That isn’t primarily a moral distinction; it’s a structural one. Criticism carries a different weight when the critic remains accountable to the people being criticized—when they have to live with the conversation after the applause fades.
Whether one ultimately agrees with Emanuel is almost beside the point. What gave his speech credibility was his willingness to say difficult things while remaining in relationship with the people he was addressing. In a conflict where so many speak about one another from a distance, that still strikes me as a rare kind of courage.
More crap spouted from a liberal Zionist that hasn't realized that your belief system is an oxymoron. You.cnst be a liberal and a Zionist theha re two contradicting ideologies, all your thought talk to Israeli to get them to acknowledge their crimes has failed. So guess what now the world isn't willing to wait for you to do the right thing, now your going to be force to change and its your fault because your liberal Zionist movement failed.
You complain as if they are two equal sides suffering the same amount. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and you want to play people with some sob story so they can see well it just complicated and we can't do anything to solve it, the world is sick of your propaganda and wre not going to listen to it anymore
I think you’re mistaken about what liberal Zionism means.
For me, it isn’t the belief that Israel is beyond criticism. It’s the belief that two peoples have legitimate claims to dignity and self-determination, that Palestinians deserve freedom and security, and that Israel has both the right to exist and the obligation to live up to its own moral ideals.
You may disagree with that framework, but calling it an oxymoron doesn’t engage with it. Liberal Zionists have often been among the fiercest critics of Israeli governments precisely because they believe criticism is an expression of responsibility, not disloyalty.
We won’t make progress by insisting everyone who disagrees is simply engaged in propaganda.
Both can be true. Settler violence is real, morally unacceptable, and should be prosecuted. It also doesn’t resolve Eli’s central question: what kind of criticism is more likely to illuminate a conflict rather than simply reinforce the audience that already agrees with it?
It's not about illumination. Everyone who matters understands the situation. It's whether it's acceptable or not. Whether we, Americans, Israelis, Jews, are finally going to take a stand against this or not. Yitzhak Rabin was speaking against the Settlements privately since 1976. Israel, including Rabin until just before he was assassinated, has chosen to support them, finance them, and promote them anyway. And everyone else turned a blind eye except Palestinians and a few Israelis and Americans with the courage to speak out in public. America is already shifting on this issue so they don't need convincing that Khanna is correct about the situation on the ground in the West Bank. The only question is if the people who believe in 2 States and a Democratic, Liberal Zionist Israel can get in front of the train before Americans trade in an Israel centric perspective for a Palestinian centric one.
I don’t think “everyone who matters” understands the situation. If they did, October 7 wouldn’t disappear from the conversation, Hamas wouldn’t be treated as incidental, Palestinian agency wouldn’t be reduced to victimhood alone, and the settlement movement wouldn’t be used to explain everything.
You say the only question is whether people will “take a stand.” I think history suggests otherwise. Plenty of people take stands. Much harder is building a political coalition that can actually change policy.
That’s why the difference between Khanna and Emanuel matters. Emanuel chose to criticize Israelis while remaining accountable to Israelis. He wasn’t performing outrage for an audience that already agreed with him; he was trying to persuade people whose minds actually matter if settlements are ever to be curtailed.
If your goal is change rather than applause, persuasion is never obsolete.
Did the Settlement's, the Settlers, and all they represent begin before or after October 7th? If they began before, how does that change the place that October 7th plays in this?
Who in America is accountable to the Palestinians? Who is building the coalition to reach them?
On the first: the settlement project long predates October 7, and nothing about October 7 excuses it. But the reverse is also true: the settlement project doesn’t explain away October 7. Both have shaped this conflict in profound ways, and both deserve to be judged on their own moral and political terms rather than used to erase the significance of the other.
On the second: that’s a question we don’t ask nearly often enough. Palestinians deserve advocates committed to their dignity, freedom, and statehood. They also deserve leaders—and allies—willing to confront Hamas, corruption, incitement, and the repeated political choices that have so often deepened Palestinian suffering. Accountability cannot run in only one direction.
Ultimately, I think lasting peace will require something even harder: leaders on both sides who are willing to tell uncomfortable truths to their own people, not just eloquent truths about the other side.
A couple years ago I stood with concerned Americans Jews protesting Smotrich’ visit to Washington. But as a former colleague at New Israel Fund said to me quietly, where we these people when we were trying to end decades of occupation?
Rahm had plenty of chances to see what we saw, and read reports from B’Tselem et al, a very long time ago. The new converts to “gee, its apartheid” are welcome even if they are only halfway honest because Israel has forced them to be.
I joined a few demonstrations against the judicial overhaul and noticed how they were “saving Israeli democracy “ with no mention of millions who have never had democratic rights. The liberal Zionism I once worked for has been an oxymoron at least since the nation-state bill passed in 2018.
Khanna had his story, yes, like every American bigwig who only sees the burnt out kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope and returns with just that (terrible) part of the story.
The newspapers in Israel are full of this happening to Palestinians and even Israelis who support Palestinians every day. You talking about Jessie Smollett is the embarrassment that this evil which Israel has allowed to thrive is now affecting the powerful.
I didn't talk about settlers, good or bad. Nor do I care what left-wing papers say in Israel. But I did talk about an American politician. I said Ro Khanna is a fraud who set himself up for a problem and is using it to curry favor in the anti-Israel progressive press and to launch his presidential campaign, while downplaying his overwhelming support for Graham Platner. And that is true, sorry to break the news to you.
Throughout my life, neither Israelis nor Palestinians were portrayed as "real persons" to Americans. They were assigned roles in a morality play; now those roles are reversed.
If it proves to be significant (not assured), Khanna's trip will have shown Americans something they've rarely seen: bullying behavior by Israelis outside the context of combat against sworn enemies.
Meeting hostage families and the Druze, and learning about relief efforts, might have added "balance," but nothing new. Israeli narratives are well-known in this country.
Mr. Kowaz writes that he has been a critic of the behavior Khanna spotlights, just as Israeli organizations called out the same prison conditions Nicholas Kristof later reported.
We Americans are then left asking, "So why haven't things changed? Why do we continue to support a government that acts with so little regard to our values and interests?" That explains Khanna's itinerary to me.
What is the official explanation on Yinon Levy?
"Everyone is just a tool." That's really the essence of Silicon Valley politics. We saw it with Saikat Chakrabarti's congress run too. As shallow and canned as a venture capital funding pitch.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2026/07/13/what-really-happened-during-rahm-emanuels-visit-to-israel/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DjYqxpgZC/?mibextid=wwXIfr
What actually happened - and why.
Your just upset that your liberal Zionism is a giant failure
Given the conspiracies in Islamic States that Israel caused Egypt's defeat to Argentina is it possible that influential sponsors like Qatar told FIFA to appoint a Muslim as a referee for Argentina-England?
https://ezequieldoiny.substack.com/p/given-the-conspiracies-in-islamic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=8t2s5
Sounds right to me.
I live in Northern California. This is par for the course for Khanna. He’s very skilled at setting up situations like this that he can then use for publicity. Recently he reached out to the Bay Area Jewish coalition (BAJC) for a meeting; they reluctantly accepted, asking and receiving from Khanna’s staff a written commitment that the meeting would be confidential, because they feared it would be used by him for publicity as “outreach to the Jewish community”, while he simultaneously harms local Jewish interests with his one sided simplistic demon portrayal of Israel as described in this piece. Right after this meeting, Khanna broke the agreement and publicized it, after getting an endorsement from “TrackAIPAC”, an anti AIPAC group. He lied to BAJC and used them to claim he supports the Jewish community with this meeting that he agreed to not publicize.
This is his MO. Use people, groups to advance his political ambition. I also have personal anecdotes from people in the area who have interacted with his campaigns that confirm he’s this kind of person.
1. ‘According to the Israeli organizers, he was offered a meeting with freed hostages and declined.’ Why should any decent person or well-wisher of Israel insult the hostages, both dead and alive, by giving the government of 7 October a publicity stunt?
2. ‘Palestinian organizers planned the trip to show him a specific perspective, and they succeeded.’ ‘No Israeli is shown as a real person.’ Khanna was in the West Bank with, i.a., Nadav Weiman, whom he has still retweeted. Do the members of Shovrim Shtika not count as Israelis? Do you have to yell at a hostage in a Knesset committee, like Almog Cohen, to count? ‘Khanna built a trip to make sure he was never in a room with any of them.’ I take it isn't enough to be in the same convoy?
3. ‘In his version of the West Bank, not a single Palestinian makes a choice.’ Obviously Palestinians have the option of choosing armed violence, which presumably you and I both think makes things worse. And they have the option of apathy or submission. What do you think a Palestinian in the West Bank can do to make things better? Vote or stand in the PA’s regular elections? Participate in the politics of the country that has power of life and death over them? Write in their bantustan’s notably free press?
Eli, I think the structural point buried inside “two Americans, one Wednesday” is the real essay.
The difference between Khanna and Emanuel isn’t simply courage versus cowardice, or honesty versus spin. It’s what each man built into the architecture of his criticism.
Khanna controlled the itinerary, controlled the camera, and departed before anyone he criticized could answer back. Emanuel stood in a room in Tel Aviv, in Hebrew, before people who could challenge him immediately, quote him back next week, or simply stop returning his calls.
One model of criticism contains a feedback loop. The other doesn’t.
That isn’t primarily a moral distinction; it’s a structural one. Criticism carries a different weight when the critic remains accountable to the people being criticized—when they have to live with the conversation after the applause fades.
Whether one ultimately agrees with Emanuel is almost beside the point. What gave his speech credibility was his willingness to say difficult things while remaining in relationship with the people he was addressing. In a conflict where so many speak about one another from a distance, that still strikes me as a rare kind of courage.
For you too, only the Israelis who stand up to Bibi are real people. Pro-netanyahus, charedim, settlers, and Inon Levy are all props.
More crap spouted from a liberal Zionist that hasn't realized that your belief system is an oxymoron. You.cnst be a liberal and a Zionist theha re two contradicting ideologies, all your thought talk to Israeli to get them to acknowledge their crimes has failed. So guess what now the world isn't willing to wait for you to do the right thing, now your going to be force to change and its your fault because your liberal Zionist movement failed.
You complain as if they are two equal sides suffering the same amount. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and you want to play people with some sob story so they can see well it just complicated and we can't do anything to solve it, the world is sick of your propaganda and wre not going to listen to it anymore
I think you’re mistaken about what liberal Zionism means.
For me, it isn’t the belief that Israel is beyond criticism. It’s the belief that two peoples have legitimate claims to dignity and self-determination, that Palestinians deserve freedom and security, and that Israel has both the right to exist and the obligation to live up to its own moral ideals.
You may disagree with that framework, but calling it an oxymoron doesn’t engage with it. Liberal Zionists have often been among the fiercest critics of Israeli governments precisely because they believe criticism is an expression of responsibility, not disloyalty.
We won’t make progress by insisting everyone who disagrees is simply engaged in propaganda.
That's the problem with most of what's called pro-Palestinian activism. It is done only to serve the needs of the so called activist.
Oh? Are Palestinians being served by the settlers shooting them and burning down their homes? Or the Israeli government that allows it?
Both can be true. Settler violence is real, morally unacceptable, and should be prosecuted. It also doesn’t resolve Eli’s central question: what kind of criticism is more likely to illuminate a conflict rather than simply reinforce the audience that already agrees with it?
It's not about illumination. Everyone who matters understands the situation. It's whether it's acceptable or not. Whether we, Americans, Israelis, Jews, are finally going to take a stand against this or not. Yitzhak Rabin was speaking against the Settlements privately since 1976. Israel, including Rabin until just before he was assassinated, has chosen to support them, finance them, and promote them anyway. And everyone else turned a blind eye except Palestinians and a few Israelis and Americans with the courage to speak out in public. America is already shifting on this issue so they don't need convincing that Khanna is correct about the situation on the ground in the West Bank. The only question is if the people who believe in 2 States and a Democratic, Liberal Zionist Israel can get in front of the train before Americans trade in an Israel centric perspective for a Palestinian centric one.
I don’t think “everyone who matters” understands the situation. If they did, October 7 wouldn’t disappear from the conversation, Hamas wouldn’t be treated as incidental, Palestinian agency wouldn’t be reduced to victimhood alone, and the settlement movement wouldn’t be used to explain everything.
You say the only question is whether people will “take a stand.” I think history suggests otherwise. Plenty of people take stands. Much harder is building a political coalition that can actually change policy.
That’s why the difference between Khanna and Emanuel matters. Emanuel chose to criticize Israelis while remaining accountable to Israelis. He wasn’t performing outrage for an audience that already agreed with him; he was trying to persuade people whose minds actually matter if settlements are ever to be curtailed.
If your goal is change rather than applause, persuasion is never obsolete.
2 questions:
Did the Settlement's, the Settlers, and all they represent begin before or after October 7th? If they began before, how does that change the place that October 7th plays in this?
Who in America is accountable to the Palestinians? Who is building the coalition to reach them?
Good questions.
On the first: the settlement project long predates October 7, and nothing about October 7 excuses it. But the reverse is also true: the settlement project doesn’t explain away October 7. Both have shaped this conflict in profound ways, and both deserve to be judged on their own moral and political terms rather than used to erase the significance of the other.
On the second: that’s a question we don’t ask nearly often enough. Palestinians deserve advocates committed to their dignity, freedom, and statehood. They also deserve leaders—and allies—willing to confront Hamas, corruption, incitement, and the repeated political choices that have so often deepened Palestinian suffering. Accountability cannot run in only one direction.
Ultimately, I think lasting peace will require something even harder: leaders on both sides who are willing to tell uncomfortable truths to their own people, not just eloquent truths about the other side.
EXACTLY!!
A couple years ago I stood with concerned Americans Jews protesting Smotrich’ visit to Washington. But as a former colleague at New Israel Fund said to me quietly, where we these people when we were trying to end decades of occupation?
Rahm had plenty of chances to see what we saw, and read reports from B’Tselem et al, a very long time ago. The new converts to “gee, its apartheid” are welcome even if they are only halfway honest because Israel has forced them to be.
I joined a few demonstrations against the judicial overhaul and noticed how they were “saving Israeli democracy “ with no mention of millions who have never had democratic rights. The liberal Zionism I once worked for has been an oxymoron at least since the nation-state bill passed in 2018.
Khanna had his story, yes, like every American bigwig who only sees the burnt out kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope and returns with just that (terrible) part of the story.
https://substack.com/@thinktorah/note/c-293262873
Theater is for good reason
Ro Khanna is trying to hide his role in supporting and funding Graham Platner, who has faced several accusations of abuse and anti-Semitism.
Ro Khanna is a fraud, and so is this Jussie Smollet-like hate crime hoax.
The newspapers in Israel are full of this happening to Palestinians and even Israelis who support Palestinians every day. You talking about Jessie Smollett is the embarrassment that this evil which Israel has allowed to thrive is now affecting the powerful.
Thanks, Anonymous "Tzedek."
I didn't talk about settlers, good or bad. Nor do I care what left-wing papers say in Israel. But I did talk about an American politician. I said Ro Khanna is a fraud who set himself up for a problem and is using it to curry favor in the anti-Israel progressive press and to launch his presidential campaign, while downplaying his overwhelming support for Graham Platner. And that is true, sorry to break the news to you.
Do you work for Breaking the Silence or Betselem?