Machine Gun-Toting Israeli Settlers Detain Ro Khanna During Trip to Occupied West Bank

Rep. Ro Khanna this week was detained by a group of Israeli settlers whom he described as "hoodlums... with machine guns" while making a visit to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.

In an interview with Reuters published on Saturday, Khanna (D-Calif.) said he and his tour group were surrounded by armed settlers as they were traveling through the West Bank on Wednesday.

"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," said Khanna. "And these hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road."

The California Democrat said that the settlers called in members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to help them deal with him and his group.

"The IDF is on their side," Khanna remarked, "not on the side of the Americans."

Cameron Kasky, an aide to Khanna, told Reuters that the group was held for over an hour before officials whom he believed to be police intervened and secured their release.

The IDF told Reuters that both military troops and police officers dispersed the settlers who had set up a roadblock near the small Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta.

Khanna wasn't the only American to have a run-in with Israeli settlers this week, as CNN reported that four settlers attacked groups of journalists, including CNN reporters and crew, who were traveling through an area north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah on Saturday.

As the journalists were driving, four settlers blocked off the road with their cars and began attacking the reporters' vehicles with wooden clubs and metal rods.

"The settlers then began to jump on the vehicle behind CNN's—carrying another group of journalists—and smashed the windshield of that vehicle," the network reported. "Another group of settlers tried to block a separate exit route before chasing the journalists towards the town of Sinjil."

Israeli police arrived on the scene and arrested four settlers who were allegedly responsible for the attacks, CNN reported.

"The Israel Police and the IDF view any manifestation of violence or causing damage to property very seriously," the Israeli officers said after the arrests, "especially when it concerns media personnel performing their work."

Israeli settlers for years have carried out violent attacks on Palestinians living in the West Bank, and witnesses have regularly described IDF soldiers at the scene either standing by as the attacks occur or even actively helping the attackers.

In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that claims about settler violence have been "blown up beyond belief," describing attacks as being carried out by a small number of "juvenile delinquents."