Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), fresh off a trip to the West Bank where he alleges he was unjustly detained by Israeli settlers and Israeli military forces, faced a barrage of criticism in a Drop Site News interview on Tuesday for refusing to endorse Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Khanna, in spite of his condemnations of Israel over the incident — which the Israeli government claims he has misrepresented — and demands for consequences for those involved, has faced pressure and condemnation from the far-left flank of the Democratic Party during his media tour following his return to the U.S. 

Such pressure reached a fever pitch in Khanna’s Tuesday interview with Drop Site, an outlet that launched in July 2024 with an 8,000-word interview with two senior Hamas leaders. Since then, the outlet has gained a reputation of credulously reporting on Hamas’ claims and repeating the group’s propaganda.

In the lengthy exchange, Drop Site co-founderJeremy Scahill repeatedly questioned Khanna, a 2028 presidential hopeful, on why he would not express support for Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers. Scahill framed the Oct. 7 attacks as primarily targeting Israeli military bases and soldiers, despite the fact that the group attacked many civilian communities and fired thousands of rockets at civilian centers.

“I think the Oct. 7 attack was a terrorist attack,” Khanna said when pressed if Palestinians have a “right” to kill Israeli soldiers. “I’m not going to say that Hamas had a right to attack Israeli soldiers or kill Israelis. I don’t think that advances peace or advances Palestinian statehood.”

Further angering Scahill, Khanna said he believed Israel had a right to go after Hamas terrorists “who killed the civilians” on Oct. 7, “but not in the way they went about it, which I said is genocide.” Scahill accused him of holding an unfair “double standard.”

“I am baffled as to how you can say that Israel had a right to drop a single bomb on Gaza in response to Oct. 7,” Scahill said. “But Palestinians, according to you, have no right whatsoever to ever kill an Israeli.”

Pressed on whether he supported in any scenario “armed resistance against Israeli occupation soldiers in uniform” — as Scahill characterized it — Khanna did not offer a hard no.

“I think if it’s self-defense, if they feel like there’s an illegal attack on them by a violent settler or by an Israeli soldier and that’s illegal, in a school or on a civilian, then of course they should have justice,” Khanna said. Pressed further, Khanna added, “I will look at it, but I don’t think that the solution in that area is to encourage [violence],” while offering support for peaceful resistance.

Scahill argued that Khanna shouldn’t be afraid of being seen as pro-Hamas. 

“You’re afraid of being called pro-Hamas, that’s what this boils down to,” he said, speculating that Khanna would acknowledge the “right to resistance by all means necessary” privately.

Khanna countered saying that the Palestinians he met during his trip to the West Bank were not interested in the sort of armed attacks that Scahill was promoting, and “just want to live their lives in dignity and peace.”

Repeatedly invoking nonviolent civil rights leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., Khanna expressed support for nonviolent protest.

The California congressman has also faced pushback for declining to endorse a full arms embargo on Israel in an interview with Hasan Piker, a social media influencer who has expressed support for Hamas and has repeatedly been condemned for antisemitism.