This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
The settler violence that Rep. Ro Khanna experienced on his recent visit to the West Bank has made headlines. But what was most important about this trip wasn’t what his delegation — of which I was a part — went through, but rather the people we met in the West Bank and the truths they told.
It’s the daily humiliations and abuse they suffer at the hands of Israeli settlers. It’s the dehumanization they feel, and the silence they encounter when they try to tell their stories to the world.
I’m an Israeli-American, and I’ve known Khanna for a decade. During that time, we’ve often agonized together over how best to leverage United States foreign policy to achieve a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My family lived in Jerusalem for six generations; I emigrated to the U.S. 50 years ago. I am a peace activist who has spent the last two decades as a student of the conflict through my work with, among others, J Street and Combatants for Peace.
After years of deep engagement on these issues — including meetings with the families of multiple Israeli hostages and participation in several diplomatic trips to Israel — Khanna told me that he wanted to go see a part of the region that had been off limits with past delegations, and to truly understand the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. As the stories of settlement expansion, movement restrictions, settler terrorism and home demolitions in the West Bank have grown louder and more intense in recent months, Khanna wanted to hear about life under occupation from people on the ground.
He especially wanted to meet members of marginalized Palestinian Christian communities, as well as Palestinian Americans living in the West Bank. He didn’t want a tour where someone else controlled the agenda. He wanted to see and hear the occupation for himself.
As we discussed this plan, it was clear that it was essential that the trip be Palestinian-led — a low-profile personal trip, not a diplomatic entourage. Many Palestinians will not meet with tours led by pro-Israel organizations. (Khanna’s staff was in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem around the personal visit, despite Ambassador Mike Huckabee alleging otherwise.) Even a liberal Jewish organization like J Street, whose congressional delegations I’ve had the privilege of accompanying, is not welcome in many places in the West Bank.
The itinerary involved visits to three areas that would show life in distinct sections of the West Bank. We began by visiting Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala and meeting with their mayors. These are Christian communities with tourism economies. We heard about the water shortages with which they must contend, because Israel restricts the water supply to Palestinians. We heard about the Israeli settlement of Yatziv seizing Beit Sahour’s only remaining open land for its own construction. We heard about the difficulty of being a Christian minority in a place that is holy to all three religions.
From there we moved to Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. In Hebron, we visited streets that are open to Israeli Jews and tourists but closed to local Palestinians. We saw markets where violent Israeli settlers have thrown refuse, urine and sometimes even acid on Palestinians.
South of Hebron, we visited the village of Umm al-Khair, where we met Eid Suleiman, a Palestinian peace activist deported from San Francisco while on a humanitarian mission in 2025. His travel companion, his cousin Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by Israeli settler Yinon Levi — who was filmed at the scene and never charged — in the summer of 2025.
We mourned Hathaleen. And we saw the sheer terror that continues to be inflicted on this village by the neighboring Israeli settlements — the daily violence, harassment, destruction of property and land confiscation.
On the last day, we visited Turmus Ayya in the north.
It is an amazing place, populated mainly by Palestinian Americans. These families have kept their homes and their land for generations. We spent hours with Palestinian Americans who live 11 months of the year in the U.S. and spend one month tending to their homes and land in the West Bank. In the U.S., they are police officers, doctors, psychologists — equal participants in a pluralistic democracy. When they return to their homeland, their rights are stripped away within minutes of landing in Tel Aviv.
They told us how they undergo intense interrogations and delays at Ben Gurion Airport. How, at checkpoints, many endure abuse for not speaking Hebrew. They told us how their towns and homes have been damaged and their cars burned by mobs of marauding settlers. They told us they feel human in the U.S., but subhuman in Palestine.
These are the important points of this trip. These are the things we should be talking about. The finger-pointing and accusations that have followed Khanna’s accurate account of having our road blocked by settlers are a distraction.
The life stories we heard from Palestinians over three days were jarring. These truths will reverberate in my mind for years, long after the finger-pointing is over.