Power Suits 9 April 2021
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at a rally for Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, in Venice Beach, California, December 2019. (NSPA & ACP)
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset primary victory in June 2018, it came as a breath of fresh air for supporters of Palestinian rights.
The month before she unseated a senior member of the Democratic Party, she had expressed her solidarity with unarmed Palestinians being gunned down by Israeli snipers as they protested in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“This is a massacre,” she tweeted on the day Israeli soldiers killed some 60 Palestinians. “I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such.”
“No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification,” she asserted. “Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”
What a difference three years and two elections to Congress make.On 1 April, Ocasio-Cortez did an online event with the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, her first meeting with the Israel lobby group.
The event might have gone unnoticed, but for a tweet on Wednesday from left-wing activist and journalist Ryan Wentz, gently criticizing her “incredibly underwhelming” response to a question about “peace both between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s vacuous word salad of an answer – which completely failed to address Israel’s violence against Palestinians or call for accountability – went viral, with thousands of responses and retweets mocking it. In a deeply disturbing development, Wentz was tracked down at his Los Angeles home on Thursday by California state police after he posted the video. They were acting at the behest of the US Capitol Police.Wentz told the publication The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s office has denied reporting Wentz’s tweet to the Capitol Police, though the episode is raising alarms about increasing police-state style censorship of US online discourse. Ocasio-Cortez has been in the forefront of calls for online speech-policing and censorship.
AOC praises Israel
While the segment of Ocasio-Cortez’s comments shared by Wentz attracted widespread derision, there are other troubling parts of her discussion with JCRC-NY that have escaped attention.
JCRC-NY CEO Michael S. Miller used the interview with Ocasio-Cortez to advance the claim that “Israel is a leader in environmental sustainability, especially in water conservation, reforesting and solar power.”
Miller spoke about seeing an Israeli aid project in Ocasio-Cortez’s ancestral homeland Puerto Rico, a country she calls “colonized” by the United States and whose self-determination she champions.
“Might there be components of the Green New Deal in New York or around the world where Israeli ecological expertise could be employed to upscale real solutions and address the climate crisis?” Miller asked the Congress member.
Ocasio-Cortez, the author of the Green New Deal, ought to have seized this opportunity to point out the striking parallels between Puerto Rico’s colonization by the United States and Palestine’s US-backed colonization by Israel.She could also have denounced Israel’s greenwashing propaganda, which aims to falsely paint it as an exemplary environmental steward, often as a cover for ethnic cleansing and theft of even more Palestinian land.
Instead, she answered, “Absolutely,” before going on to praise “Israel’s technology around wastewater circulation.”
Those technological marvels will come as news to two million Palestinians caged by Israel in Gaza, where due to Israel’s wars and blockade, 97 percent of water is undrinkable and conditions are like living in a septic tank.
While Ocasio-Cortez’s dismal performance during the JCRC-NY event sparked widespread ridicule, a basic question is why a self-proclaimed champion of human rights and racial justice agreed to participate at all.
Justifying Gaza massacre
JCRC-NY is an Israel lobby group whose activities include organizing junkets to Israel for politicians and community leaders.
It uses these junkets to build support and influence to advance its agenda, which includes justifying Israel’s brutal violence against Palestinians.
It disseminates propaganda attacking the Palestine solidarity movement, including recommendations from Israel’s Reut Institute think tank on how to smear and sabotage the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
In Ocasio-Cortez’s defense, she appears never actually to have endorsed the BDS movement, unlike her fellow Squad members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
JCRC-NY promotes a host of far-right anti-Palestinian organizations, including CAMERA, HonestReporting, Palestinian Media Watch and Our Soldiers Speak, a propaganda organization for the Israeli military.
It also promotes the Israel on Campus Coalition, a group shown to collude secretly with the Israeli government to surveil and smear American college students and educators who organize in support of Palestinian rights.
The CEO of JCRC-NY – the same Michael S. Miller who interviewed Ocasio-Cortez – has attacked the New York chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a “superstar” member.
According to Miller, the group was anti-Semitic because it asked candidates seeking its endorsement to pledge not to go on the kind of propaganda junkets to Israel that lobby groups like JCRC-NY organize.
(Notably, even NYC-DSA had to distance itself from Ocasio-Cortez following her 2018 endorsement of now fully discredited New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.)
The depravity of JCRC-NY’s anti-Palestinian racism can be gauged by an action alert it issued in support of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza.
During 51 days of merciless bombardment, Israel killed more than 2,200 Palestinians including 550 children – an average of 11 children per day.
Entire families were obliterated in their homes.
The lobby group’s efforts to justify the massacre in real-time included hosting briefings with senior Israeli military officers and officials.
“Not the expert”
Ocasio-Cortez’s path into the arms of the JCRC-NY – and who knows which Israel lobby group might be next – has been discernible from the start, even if it has had a few detours on the way.
Within weeks of her stunning June 2018 primary win, she already showed signs of buckling under pro-Israel pressure.
When challenged on PBS about her description of Israel’s mass killings of unarmed Palestinians as a “massacre,” she replied defensively: “Well, I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist. I am a proponent of the two-state solution.”
That represented a quick reversion to accepted Democratic Party orthodoxy. She also said apologetically that she was “not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.”
She was given the chance to address the stumble less than two weeks later in an interview with outlet Mic, but Ocasio-Cortez dodged the question and did not mention Palestine at all.
Ocasio-Cortez appears to have taken the lesson to heart: Since her May 2018 “massacre” tweet, she has rarely tweeted to her 12 million followers about Palestinians or about Israel’s abuses at all.
She never again tweeted about Gaza.
Last year, Ocasio-Cortez delivered another shock to supporters of Palestinian rights, when she agreed to participate in an Israel lobby event honoring Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister responsible for decades of expulsions and war crimes against Palestinians.
Amid strong criticism from Palestinians and supporters, Ocasio-Cortez backed out of the Rabin event.
But in hindsight, given her recent embrace of JCRC-NY, it appears her initial acceptance of the Rabin event was not a hapless mistake, but a calculated effort to curry favor with the Israel lobby.
True, Ocasio-Cortez has still occasionally taken positions that go beyond those of mainstream Democrats.
Last summer, she angered the lobby group AIPAC by spearheading a congressional letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that called for putting conditions on US funding for Israel if it proceeded with formal annexation of land in the occupied West Bank.
This letter appears to be the only item on her official website that refers to Palestinians.
And while she has not endorsed BDS, Ocasio-Cortez did co-sponsor a 2019 resolution introduced by Ilhan Omar supporting the right to engage in boycotts as a matter of principle – though that resolution did not explicitly mention Israel.
Path to the center
Ocasio-Cortez’s embrace of an Israel lobby group like JCRC-NY is of a piece with her widely noted shift towards the center of the Democratic Party.
The backlash over her response to the question on Palestinians recalls the outpouring of disgust earlier this month when she deflected criticism from the Biden administration’s continuation of cruel Trump-era policies of detaining migrant and refugee children at the US-Mexico border.
Under Trump, she had called the detention practices “concentration camps” – language that has now disappeared from her vocabulary.
It also follows the backlash in December over the refusal by Ocasio-Cortez and every other member of her allegedly progressive Squad to withhold their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to force a vote on Medicare for All.At the time, Ocasio-Cortez justified falling into line behind Pelosi on the basis that it would preserve progressives’ “leverage” to win a $15 minimum wage.
But then when Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad had the opportunity to hold up the Biden administration’s must-pass COVID-19 relief package unless it included the overwhelmingly popular minimum wage hike, they refused to do that too.
During an interview with DSA last month, Ocasio-Cortez slammed leftists skeptical that progressive policy could come out of the Biden administration as espousing “a really privileged critique” and suggested they were “bad-faith actors.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s shift to the right, including her embrace of the Israel lobby and echoing of its propaganda, could be linked to reports that she may mount a primary challenge against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Or it may be motivated by the mundane and routine personal interests of almost every politician who seeks to stay in office and advance through the ranks of their party.
None of that would make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarkable, but no one should mistake her for a courageous champion of human rights, especially those of Palestinians.
Tags
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- Democratic Party
- Jewish Community Relations Council
- JCRC-NY
- Ilhan Omar
- Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)
Comments
No Surprise!
Permalink Stefano R. Baldari replied on
There is no, and there shouldn't be any, surprise to AOC's shift to the right. AOC always was, in my opinion, a consummate political opportunist, looking for the proper sound bite and toward the next election for another victory. Supporting Palestinians would simply get in the way of that. And, as far as supporting a two state solution to Occupied Palestine (Israel), that is utterly ludicrous, it was always a monumental deception by Zionists. Occupied Palestine (Israel) never wanted that, it was always about putting justice for Palestinians in permanent abeyance (a one-state solution is the only answer). I believe that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will continue to move further to the right as her political career progresses, or shall I say regresses.
Disappointing but not giving up on AOC or esp the Squad yet
Permalink StevoR replied on
Well, this is certainly disappointing and far from AOC's finest moment but I am not giving up on AOC or the Squad - Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman & Cori Bush - of young progressive Democratic Congresspeople yet.
Perhaps the others there can draw her back to a more pro-Palestinian position eventually?
Maybe she's been under too much threat of being Corbyned* and this is tactical and poorly, unclearly expressed? Surely she feels and knows differently than how this comes over? It did seem like she was stumbling and that the question was sprung on her when she wasn't prepared for it or for discussing the issue. I'd like to see her follow this up and it will be interesting to see if she does expand on, clarify or elaborate her position here.
Anyhow, I still admire and like AOC and am NOT giving upon her and don't think others should be too quick to condemn her or write her off either.
* Slandered as an anti-Semite to destroy her political career as happened to former British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.
OAC
Permalink Frank Dallas replied on
Proof positive of the corrupting influence of State power, or any power. Lord Acton was no critic of the status quo, but he observed the obvious: you can't grant a small group of people extraordinary power over the lives of a large number of people without it leading to corruption. To put into English what AOC said: "I'm not going to criticise Israel in front of you Mr Miller because it might be bad for my career." The only way to overcome the corruption which accompanies power is to dissolve it. Power must always be made to answer for itself. Ask this question of the people who run the world: How could we do it any less well ourselves? Of course, the modern world is built on the myths that people of colour, the poor, the workers, the common folk are congenitally stupid and can't look after their own lives. Odd then isn't it that they do the work which makes society run and the rich, rich. We don't need AOC because we don't need people to represent us. We can do things for ourselves. Even the very best elected representatives let us down. In 1946 homeless people in the UK occupied deserted army camps and turned them into decent homes. Aneurin Bevan, Labour's housing minister, accused them of jumping the housing queue. He was about the most radical elected politician in 20th century Britain, but he blenched from people doing things for themselves. He was wrong and the homeless squatters were right. We can see what needs to be done. Two things get in the way, the rich and the State. The first need to be disappropriated and the second dismantled. Israel uses the power of its own and the US State to oppress the Palestinians. Every form of oppression across the world is associated with concentrated wealth and power. AOC's career is not our business. Our business is our liberty.