When Confronting Israel Becomes a Career Strategy, Who Speaks for California?

In the space of one week in July 2026, Rep. Ro Khanna went from managing the fallout of his enthusiastic backing of collapsed Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner to being the lead story out of Judea and Samaria in Israel (also known as the “West Bank”) detained, he said, by armed settlers while Israeli soldiers looked on. The Israeli military disputed his account. His own aide’s version of how the episode ended didn’t quite match his. A Free Press analyst who has covered the region for years called the discrepancies serious enough to accuse him of “grossly exaggerating.” Even a fellow Democrat, Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, said publicly what many colleagues were saying privately: this looked like a publicity stunt.

Set the specific dispute aside for a moment – what happened at that roadblock may never be fully agreed upon. The more interesting question is the one the episode surfaces: why has confronting Israel become such a reliable lane for ambitious Democrats right now, and what does it say about whether officials like Khanna are genuinely serving the interests of the state that elected them?

The Pattern Is Real. This is not one congressman’s improvisation. It’s a trend with a primary-night box score.

In New York, two Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates, Claire Valdez and Darializa Chevalier, defeated established incumbents in June 2026 congressional primaries while making Israel a defining issue rather than an afterthought. Chevalier, a first-time candidate with no elected experience, unseated five-term Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Adriano Espaillat despite attending an October 8, 2023 rally celebrating the “Palestinian resistance” less than twenty-four hours after Hamas had finished butchering, raping, kidnapping and burning Israeli civilians alive. She later defended the rally, previously declared that “Israel doesn’t exist,” and nevertheless won comfortably. Twenty years ago, appearing at a rally in New York celebrating Hamas blowing-up buses or restaurants in Jerusalem or Tel-Aviv would have ended a political career. In today’s Democratic primaries, celebrating Hamas on October 8th helps get you to Congress.

In New Jersey, DSA-backed Dr. Adam Hamawy – a trauma surgeon with no prior political experience – emerged from a twelve-candidate Democratic primary by centering his campaign on Gaza, demanding an end to virtually all American military support for Israel, accusing Israel of systematic war crimes, and embracing the broader anti-Zionist framework that increasingly dominates the activist left. A Palestinian super PAC created specifically to counter AIPAC spent more than $1.5 million helping elect him. He is now heavily favored to enter Congress next January.

In Michigan, DSA candidate Abdul El-Sayed has led the Democratic Senate primary field while campaigning alongside pro-Palestinian (and profoundly anti-American and pro-China) streamer Hasan Piker and drawing endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib – and Ro Khanna himself. Khanna’s fingerprints are on this trend well beyond his own July trip to Israel.

None of this happened in a vacuum. A recent Pew survey found that 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now hold an unfavorable view of Israel. The politics have shifted, and ambitious Democrats have noticed.

What DSA Actually Says. It’s worth being precise here, because precision is exactly what’s often missing in this debate. DSA does not describe itself as merely critical of a particular Israeli government or settlement policy. Its formal position is “anti-Zionist”: it treats Zionism itself – the principle that Jews like any other peoples are entitled to self-determination and sovereignty in part of their indigenous homeland – as an illegitimate, “settler-colonial project;” and DSA-affiliated resolutions commit the organization to opposing Israel as a matter of principle, alongside support for an unrestricted Palestinian right of return. Meaning, the end of the one (very tiny) Jewish majority country in the world.

History tells us what follows when Jews become a vulnerable minority in the Middle East. There is no mystery here and no shortage of evidence. During the last century, nearly every historic Jewish community across the Arab world was extinguished. Roughly one million Jews were dispossessed or driven from Arab countries. Lebanon’s Christians were reduced from a majority to a shrinking minority. Iraq’s Assyrians largely disappeared. Syria’s remaining Christian population collapsed. The region’s oldest minority communities have repeatedly learned the same lesson: once political power changes hands, legal guarantees quickly become meaningless.

Against that historical backdrop, calls by many on the far left of the Democratic party to replace Israel with a “binational” or “unitary democratic state” are not proposals that exist in a vacuum.

They ask Israelis to disregard every lesson modern Middle Eastern history teaches about what happens to vulnerable minorities. They ask Jews to believe that the one Jewish-majority state on earth will somehow become the first Arab-majority state in the region where history suddenly stops applying. October 7th made that proposition even more detached from reality. Hamas demonstrated what it intended to do with roughly six hours of relatively unhindered access to Israeli civilians. It requires either extraordinary naiveite or wishful thinking to imagine that handing such forces permanent political control over Israel would produce Switzerland rather than another chapter in the tragic history of Middle Eastern minorities.

The California Angle. Which brings the question to Ro Khanna’s home. California is one of the most reliably Democratic states in the country – and one of the most tangible beneficiaries of a functioning U.S.-Israel relationship. The Carlsbad Desalination Plant, designed and operated by the Israeli firm IDE Technologies, supplies roughly 10% of San Diego County’s drinking water and stands as insurance against the kind of Colorado River supply disputes that increasingly define Western water politics. That’s not an abstraction; it’s showers, agriculture, and drought resilience for millions of people, built on decades of Israeli engineering expertise that California water suppliers specifically sought out because no one else had it at scale.

California’s stake in Israel extends far beyond one desalination plant. Israel is one of Silicon Valley’s closest technology partners, a world leader in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, semiconductor design, agricultural technology, medical innovation, water engineering and venture-backed entrepreneurship. California companies invest billions of dollars in Israeli innovation because doing so advances California’s economy, strengthens its technological edge, and creates jobs at home. Those are tangible California interests – not abstract foreign-policy preferences.

Which brings us back to Ro Khanna. Californians elected a congressman to advance California’s interests – not to audition for the ideological litmus tests of the Democratic Socialists of America or the activist class shaping tomorrow’s Democratic presidential primaries. When those ambitions collide, voters deserve to know which constituency comes first.

Khanna’s increasingly theatrical confrontations with Israel may generate headlines, cable television appearances and applause from the party’s activist base. They do not generate water security for California, technological partnerships for Silicon Valley, stronger American alliances or greater regional stability.

Politicians reveal their priorities by the fights they choose. At a moment when California faces soaring costs, housing shortages, energy challenges, water insecurity and mounting technological competition from China, Ro Khanna chose to travel halfway around the world in pursuit of yet another public confrontation with America’s closest and best ally in the Middle East.

That may be smart presidential politics inside today’s Democratic Party.

It is considerably harder to argue that it is smart representation for the people of California.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.