{"id":12052,"date":"2025-08-05T16:20:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T16:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnsons-provocative-photo-op-in-israel-comes-amid-outcry-over-american-deaths\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T16:20:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T16:20:37","slug":"mike-johnsons-provocative-photo-op-in-israel-comes-amid-outcry-over-american-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnsons-provocative-photo-op-in-israel-comes-amid-outcry-over-american-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Johnson\u2019s provocative photo op in Israel comes amid outcry over American deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> reportedly made a provocative visit to an Israeli-held area that has been deemed an illegal settlement by the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Axios reported<\/a> that the Louisiana Republican and several other GOP lawmakers made an unannounced trip to Israel over the weekend amid growing criticism<\/a> of the country’s government<\/a> as it continues its deadly occupation of Gaza. On Monday, Johnson was photographed in the Ariel region of the occupied West Bank, and a pro-Israel GOP activist on the trip cited him as saying the territory is the “rightful property”<\/a> of the Jewish people.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry reportedly condemned Johnson’s visit<\/a> as “provocative incitement that encourages settler crimes and land confiscation.”<\/p>\n

The trip’s timing certainly reveals a contrast between the speaker, who is a staunch backer of the Israeli government, and the increasingly outspoken number of Israel critics in Congress — a group that includes MAGA loyalists<\/a>. (Johnson had planned a trip to address the Israeli parliament in June, but it was postponed because of the conflict between Israel and Iran.)<\/p>\n

As I recently wrote<\/a>more than two dozen Democratic senators denounced the raft of settler violence in the West Bank against people of Palestinian descent that has also killed Americans. So while some members of Congress seem disturbed by settler expansion and the deadly violence it has involved, the House speaker’s propagandistic appearance at the Ariel settlement seemingly emboldens the purveyors of that violence to continue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ja’han Jones<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Ja’han Jones is an BLN opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. He is a futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics. His previous projects include “Black Hair Defined” and the “Black Obituary Project.”<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly made a provocative visit to an Israeli-held area that has been deemed an illegal settlement by the United Nations. Axios reported that the Louisiana Republican and several other GOP lawmakers made an unannounced trip to Israel over the weekend amid growing criticism of the country’s government as it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}