Rep. Ro Khanna is making a play for the anti-Israel left.

He chose one of the most jaw-dropping ways possible to do it.

And the man he wants walking free is serving five life sentences for murder.

What Khanna Actually Said

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) posted on X calling for Israel to release Marwan Barghouti, a man an Israeli court convicted in 2004 on five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for attacks that killed a Greek Orthodox monk and four other people.

“I am calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti from Israeli prison,” Khanna wrote.

In a video he attached to the post, Khanna did not dispute the conviction. He argued around it.

“Palestinians must choose their own leaders,” Khanna said. “Barghouti has a unique standing among all Palestinian factions.”

“He’s seen as non-corrupt, a strong leader, and secular,” Khanna continued. “Barghouti could deliver a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.”

Then Khanna tried to separate the demand from any implication of innocence. “Releasing Barghouti does not provide him with a pardon or moral absolution of crimes he may have committed,” he said. “In fact, a number of human rights groups say he did not even receive a fair trial. But the release is needed to move peace forward, just like Arafat and Rabin worked for peace despite their pasts.”

He went further, reaching for a historical comparison to soften the ask. “The Irish Republic Army, the IRA, did terrible things in its war against British and Protestant domination,” Khanna said. “But when the IRA said they had a vision of equality and coexistence, letting them participate in politics was the right decision.”

And apparently Khanna believes that same logic extends to a man serving five consecutive life sentences.

Who Marwan Barghouti Actually Is

The Israeli court did not convict Barghouti on technicalities or procedural grounds. The 2004 verdict covered five murders across multiple attacks.

Barghouti is not a minor figure caught up in circumstances. He served as one of Yasir Arafat’s top lieutenants and led the Tanzim, a militia arm of Fatah. His sentence runs five life terms plus additional prison time.

Khanna dressed this up as a peace argument. But what he described is a member of the United States Congress publicly demanding that a close American ally release a man serving five life sentences for murder because Khanna believes that man could lead a future Palestinian state. He did not call for a new trial. He did not present evidence of innocence. He called for release outright and offered diplomatic utility as the reason.

The timing matters too. Khanna is weighing a 2028 presidential run, according to reporting from the Times of Israel, and he has been moving steadily toward the anti-Israel faction of his party for years. The California Democrat once described himself as pro-Israel. That characterization no longer fits the record.

What This Says About Where the Democrat Party Has Gone

Khanna presents himself as one of the more thoughtful voices in the Democrat Party. The self-described “moderate” framing that hovers around his public image does not survive scrutiny here.

But there is a broader pattern worth naming. The Democrat Party has spent years moving in a direction where a sitting member of Congress can publicly demand the release of a man convicted of five murders, frame it as a peace initiative, and face no serious pushback from his own leadership. That is where the party is.

Khanna invoked Arafat and Rabin in the same breath, as though Arafat’s track record with negotiated agreements is a reassuring precedent. He compared Barghouti’s potential release to IRA figures entering politics in Northern Ireland. The IRA comparison is one Khanna apparently finds persuasive. A lot of the families of Barghouti’s victims probably find it something else entirely.

There is also an election angle that cannot be ignored. With midterms approaching, Khanna is road-testing a foreign policy posture designed to energize the anti-Israel left in his party while he weighs a presidential campaign. A demand like this costs him nothing in his Silicon Valley district and buys him something in the activist base he needs to build a national coalition. The victims of Barghouti’s attacks do not vote in California’s 17th Congressional District.

And the argument itself deserves a harder look than most coverage will give it. Khanna did not actually say Barghouti is innocent. He acknowledged crimes “he may have committed” in the same breath he used to argue for release. He waved toward unnamed human rights groups and their concerns about the trial’s fairness. He did not name them. He did not describe the specific procedural objections. He simply invoked them as permission to set aside a conviction and five life sentences because, in his view, the man behind bars has political value.

That is not a peace argument. That is a politician running a cost-benefit analysis on someone else’s murder convictions.

The Democrat Party’s drift on these questions did not happen overnight. It has been visible for years, moving through layers of congressional letter-writing, procedural votes on aid, and increasingly sharp rhetoric about Israel. Khanna calling for Barghouti’s release is not an isolated moment. It is the logical endpoint of a direction the party’s activist wing has been pushing toward for a long time, and Khanna is now willing to put his name on it publicly.

The families of a Greek Orthodox monk and four other people killed in those attacks deserve better than to watch an American congressman treat the man convicted of those murders as a diplomatic asset worth liberating.

Khanna called it peace. Most people would call it something else.

Sources: Breitbart News; Times of Israel