Congressman Ro Khanna has been making a lot of noise lately—pushing for the release of the Epstein files, challenging the administration over war powers in the escalating conflict with Iran, and positioning himself on the front lines of the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel and Palestine. Plenty of people suspect he’s trying to carve out a lane for a presidential run. On Israel-Palestine, that lane is clearly to the left of most national Democrats: sharply critical of Israel, willing to call Gaza a genocide, and increasingly explicit about the occupation.
In January, his team reached out to me for input as they worked on a House resolution on the West Bank, and I agreed to share what I considered the most urgent issues. I was clear with them that the core problem was a Zionist project with ever-expanding territorial aims, not just a few bad ministers or a temporary policy deviation. Any real change, I told them, would require a much more radical rethinking of the U.S.-Israel relationship than most Democrats have been willing to entertain.
That same week, with the distinction between rhetoric and action—and between band-aids and cures—very much in mind, I noticed Khanna had voted for a spending bill that included billions more for Israeli security and cut UNRWA funding. I called him out publicly, and he responded quickly, saying the Israel provisions had been folded into a broader appropriations bill and had been “snuck in” by Republicans; when I asked directly whether he had known those provisions were in the bill when he voted for it, he replied, “I genuinely did not.” When the bill later came back amended, he reached out privately to tell me he’d be voting no. It was clear that he wanted to prove his mettle on the issue, and he agreed to an interview once the House resolution came out.
Khanna introduced House Resolution 1092 this week, condemning Israeli settlement expansion, settler violence, and human rights abuses in the West Bank while calling for accountability and specific U.S. policy responses. In our conversation, he was quick to admit that it will not produce immediate material change; rather, it is meant to establish a clear Democratic policy framework and build pressure for future administrations to act.
With that in mind, I wanted to use my conversation with Khanna to press him on the harder questions that Democratic presidential hopefuls will increasingly have to answer if they want to occupy the left flank of this issue. In other words, the places where the rubber actually meets the road.
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