Ro Khanna’s New Reason for Jew-Hatred

For a very long time, there have been lots of people who believed they had lots of good reasons to hate Jews.

The Romans found the Jews to be a stiff-necked people who refused to worship Roman gods.  Christians believed the Jews killed the son of G-d.  Muslims believed, and apparently still believe, that Jews perverted true religion and rejected the prophets—most particularly, the last and greatest prophet, Mohammad.

And the hatred has not been founded only upon extreme religious notions.  In the twentieth century, “scientific” antisemitism was based on the alleged characteristics of Jews as a “race” separate and apart from all other human races.  Jews were said to be uniquely secretive, cunning and powerful, a parasitic race that controlled world events in a way that benefited them over, and at the expense of, all other peoples.

Given this millennia-long history, one would think that every possible reason for hating Jews that a febrile imagination could conjure would have already been enunciated.  Wrong.

Just in the last two weeks, Ro Khanna, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, has offered an entirely new reason to dislike Jews—namely, that Jews are uniquely prone to be prejudiced against people of color (such as Rep. Khanna).

By now, it is well known that Rep. Khanna toured the disputed territories—also known as Judea and Samaria or, alternatively, (and in Khanna’s favored terminology) the West Bank—and was detained briefly by armed Israeli Jews and troops of the I.D.F.  There are conflicting accounts as to why he and his entourage were detained, but there is no dispute that, after about one and a half hours, he was free to go on his way.

What is especially significant, I submit, is not the incident itself, but what Khanna said about it afterwards.  Here is the relevant part of what he said in a video he made shortly after the incident was over:

Being in the West Bank and in Israel is the first time that I have really been acutely aware of being brown.  I feel like people have seen me first as brown, second as an American congressman, and third as an American citizen.

So, there it is: Khanna, who is 49 years old and has lived in the U.S. for his entire life, had never, ever met people who made him “acutely aware” of his skin color until he had the bad luck to encounter Israeli Jews.  Israeli Jews, in Khanna’s view, are apparently uniquely prone to racism against people of color.

Khanna’s pronouncement is something to ponder.  One tends to think that people who harbor virulent hatred for those with a darker skin color are also people who hate Jews.  The Ku Klux Klan comes immediately to mind.  And even in the year 2026, there are still people in the U.S. who continue to cling to both hatreds.  But Khanna has apparently never encountered even one such person in his lifetime.  Only Israeli Jews have ever made him “acutely aware” of his skin color.

Moreover, it’s a simple fact that a substantial percentage of Israeli Jews are themselves people with brown and black skin color.  And those darker-colored Israeli Jews enjoy all the privileges that are enjoyed by every other Israeli citizen.  Rep. Khanna must somehow imagine that lighter-colored Israeli Jews regularly go about disrespecting and discriminating against all those other Israeli Jews—this is indeed a product of his imagination.

What is particularly telling is that Khanna never identifies anything Israeli Jews did or said to him that made him “acutely aware” of his skin color.  You can (and I hope you will) review the entire video for yourself, and you will find nothing of that nature.

Khanna complains of the “arrogance” of Israelis who detained him, but his entourage included white Americans who were, according to Khanna, treated with precisely the same degree of arrogance.  So, it remains a mystery why Khanna interpreted the incident as having anything to do with his skin color.

That is, it remains a mystery if one assumes that Rep. Khanna is trying to be honest in his assessment of the Israeli Jews’ behavior.  It becomes much easier to understand if one recognizes that Khanna is an ambitious politician who freely acknowledges that he is contemplating a run for the presidency.

With a struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination on the horizon, Khanna has most likely concluded that, in today’s Democratic party, negativity toward Israel and Israelis is going to be a necessary prerequisite for success.  If slandering Israeli Jews with baseless accusations of racism could lead to political advancement, would Khanna hesitate to make those accusations?

You decide.