Ro Khanna

For half a century, the road to the White House detoured through Jerusalem. The ritual never changed: a wreath at Yad Vashem, a handshake with the prime minister, a quote about the unbreakable bond. In 2008, Barack Obama stood in rocket-scarred Sderot, Israel, and talked about protecting his daughters. In 2012, Mitt Romney placed a handwritten note in the Western Wall.

The trip tells Jewish and evangelical voters back home: I stand with Israel, and I stand with you. It also allows local politicians with no foreign policy record to play statesman. In 1998, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush flew in a helicopter over Israel and came home looking presidential. Israel was the safest dangerous place on Earth: a real conflict, a real ally and little chance of embarrassment.

There was one cautionary tale. In 1979, the Rev. Jesse Jackson embraced Yasser Arafat in Lebanon for the cameras. American Jews never forgot the photograph. It cast a shadow over both of his presidential campaigns and soured Jewish Democrats on him years before the slur “Hymietown” finished the job.

That cautionary tale is becoming the playbook.

On July 8, while Iranian missiles were striking American military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, Rahm Emanuel stood at Tel Aviv University and lectured his audience that their government had made Israel a “territorial pariah.”

That same day, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna entered a closed militarized zone in the West Bank, where, he claims, settlers detained him. He waited three days to announce the incident. Perhaps he didn’t want to compete with Emanuel for headlines, or perhaps the campaign needed assembly: He had a lapel microphone, a news photographer and a fundraising email ready to go soon after. Khanna said the trip was coordinated with the U.S. Embassy, which the U.S. ambassador denied. He spent all three days in the West Bank. No Jerusalem. No Sderot. He came home conveniently saying the experience made him more interested in running for president.

Here is what makes the theater harder to take. In March, in Khanna’s district, two Israeli Americans were beaten outside a restaurant after attackers heard them speaking Hebrew. Daniel Klein, who runs Jewish Silicon Valley, called the assault the “natural maturation” of rhetoric Khanna has amplified. Oleg Ivanov from StandWithUs Northern California said Khanna’s defense of antisemitic voices “actively endangers the lives of Jewish people in his district,” which has seen a surge in antisemitic incidents.

And this is a district Israelis have been good to. According to a recent report, Israeli-founded companies support nearly 1,200 jobs in Khanna’s district, at average with earnings above $215,000. A congressman with all that in his backyard might have found a better use for three days than searching the Hebron Hills for a roadblock.

Emanuel’s speech, for all its sting, was delivered by a man whose father fought in Israel’s War of Independence. If Emanuel is the family member dishing out tough love, Khanna is the distant cousin nobody remembers inviting, who forces his way into every photo. Still, both men flew over for the same reason: Democratic primary voters now reward distance.

In 2020, no major democratic contender made the trip. Then Oct. 7, 2023, made Israel the most contested issue in Democratic politics. Republicans have their own Israel-skeptic wing, loudest in the podcast studios. Whether the next crop of Republican candidates follows the clickbait commentators will tell us if this inversion is a Democratic or American affliction.

Neither Emanuel nor Khanna met with a member of Israel’s government. Or at least not one who has more than ceremonial power. When a politician flies 6,000 miles and requests no government meeting, it becomes clear that Israel was the backdrop for an audience at home.

Israel has become the one stage where an ambitious Democrat can court far-left voters without insulting American Jews to their faces. The rebuke is delivered an ocean away, for cameras pointed at home. If Israel was once the safest place to polish foreign policy credentials, it’s now the safest place to burnish left-wing ones.

But no one needs a boarding pass to criticize Israel. American officials do it every day, from committee rooms and cable studios. That’s fine. Allies argue. What should not be on offer is Israel as a set. This alliance has held through three years of a multifront war that Israel fought largely with American arms and diplomatic cover, and it has held because it cuts both ways. America gets a steadfast ally in a strategic region: one that fights enemies of the West, shares intelligence, prepositions American aircraft and creates American jobs.

Consider the Iron Dome, American-funded and Israeli-invented. Last month, Marines in Guam intercepted a missile with Iron Dome technology. During the Iran war, Israel reportedly sent an Iron Dome battery to protect the Emirates. An American investment in Israel’s security now protects American forces and allies.

An alliance like that can survive criticism. What corrodes it is theater.

So here is a suggestion for the 2028 candidates in both parties. Go to Israel, and go to the Palestinian neighborhoods. Go to the University of Haifa, where more than 40% of the student population is Arab. Visit Hadassah Medical Center where Jewish nurses and Muslim doctors work together to save lives. Meet Palestinian entrepreneurs at EasTech, a high-tech incubator that is primarily funded by the Jerusalem municipality and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

And when you visit these places, put away the microphone and the speech written for a base far away, and do the one thing nobody on this month’s itineraries prioritized: Listen.

Aaron Kaplowitz is president of the United States-Israel Business Alliance.