Scarborough Flat-Out Asks Ro Khanna If Israeli ‘Detainment’ Was ‘Publicity Stunt’

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough straight-up asked Rep. Ro Khanna (D-LA) whether his tale of being detained while visiting the West Bank was the sort of “publicity stunt” his critics are accusing him of.

Khanna joined Morning Joe on Thursday and pushed back against critics blasting him over his visit to the West Bank and his accusation that Israeli settlers and military forces detained him and his team for a period of time while they tried to leave a demolished village.

Scarborough compared the controversy surrounding Khanna to blowback others have received when reporting negative stories about Israel and the country’s military.

“You’re being accused of trespassing, you’re being accused of doing this as a publicity stunt when in fact it seems to me, based on what I’ve seen, many of those claims against you are also lies,” he told the congressman.

Scarborough asked Khanna whether accusations being thrown at him were true, and if he was hyping up the detainment as a publicity stunt.

“Were you trespassing? Did you deliberately go to a place you were not supposed to go to? Did you do this all as a publicity stunt?” he asked.

Khanna explained:

No, Joe, I had the audacity to say that I wanted a Palestinian-led tour of the West Bank. I’ve been to Israel three times. We informed the Israeli embassy, we informed the American embassy, and I was there with two other Americans, a number of Israelis, Palestinians at a village that extreme settlers had destroyed… the IDF has said it wasn’t a restricted zone. They had every right to be there. And you had these armed settlers come, one brandishing an M4, and they parked their car right in front of our van to block the road from exiting. They’re saying, well, we weren’t detained because they didn’t hold up a gun against at our heads. Well, no, they didn’t hold up a gun against our heads, but they were walking around the van, kicking the tires and parked outside so we couldn’t leave. And the IDF comes and they allow more settlers to come and park vans in front of us, and they don’t let us leave. And finally, the American embassy does an excellent job… the point of all this is I would have just thought the Israeli ambassador or Israel would say, we’re sorry, there were these Americans that were detained, it shouldn’t have happened. We’re going to look at the incident. Instead, they have gone totally on the defensive. But I hope this allows me to tell the stories of Palestinians.

The congressman, a vocal critic of Israel’s government, shared video of Israeli settlers outside his vehicle as he was leaving the village of Khirbet Zanuta. Khanna was first stopped by Israeli settlers, who were joined by multiple Israeli military vehicles. Khanna and his team were eventually allowed to leave.

“I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life,” Khanna said after the incident. “Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”

Watch above via MS NOW.

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