Well, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the insurgent democratic socialists who beat top House Democrat Joe Crowley in a primary, is off to a great start in her career in public life, and as the new face of the Democratic Party. She’sbrain-dead on economicsand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On her socioeconomic agenda, well, she doesn’t know how to pay for it. She doesn’t even know how much we spend on the military, so you can she has a grasp of the books; the military is one of the big-ticket items in our budget. So, given that, you think she has a clue about the complex and ultimately ruinous tax structure that will need to be implemented to pay for her socialist goodie bag—all of which does not have a chance in hell in passing Congress. Hell no! Yet, she first stepped on a rake discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on PBS’ Firing Line last month, where she criticized Israel before admitting that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
…on PBS' "Firing Line" Friday, Ocasio-Cortez gave a more nuanced answer when asked her views on the Jewish state. "Well, I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist. I am a proponent of a two-state solution. And for me, it’s not — this is not a referendum on the state of Israel," she said.
Ocasio-Cortez walked back her use of the terms "massacre" and "occupation." "I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue," she laughed. "I am a firm believer in finding a two-state solution on this issue, and I'm happy to sit down with leaders on both of these…"
But when Ocasio-Cortez interviewed with the left-wing Democracy Now! … she was singing a different tune, now declining to say she supported the two-state solution.
"Are you still for a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine?" asked host Amy Goodman.
"You know, I think this is a conversation that I'm engaging with with activists right now," she responded. "Because this is a huge– especially over this weekend. This is a conversation that I'm sitting down with lots of activists in this movement on, and I'm looking forward to engaging in this conversation."
Well, when you hang around activists like Linda Sarsour, you’ll probably change course on this issue. Sarsour is pro-Palestine and immensely controversial, but is this a shocker, though concerning Cortez’s changed position on Israel? The far left hates Israel. They think it’s a terrorist state. It’s prime territory for anti-Semites to fester. For Sarsour, she’s anti-Zionist and believes that supporters of Israel cannot be feminists:
Sarsour, who is of Palestinian descent, has also been a harsh critic of Israel. Soon after the Women’s March, she drew fire from Jewish leaders for telling The Nation that unabashed supporters of Israel cannot be feminists.
“It just doesn’t make any sense for someone to say, ‘Is there room for people who support the state of Israel and do not criticize it in the movement?’ There can’t be in feminism,” she told the magazine in March. “You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none.”
Sarsour backs the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction [BDS] Israel, known as BDS. She told NY1 that she supports a one-state solution that would create a shared country for Jews and Palestinians — a solution that many Jews consider a formula for the demise of Israel. And in 2012, she tweeted “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.”
And yes, BDS is an anti-Semitic movement. Yet, the irony is that while this side of the Israel-Palestinian issue is aligned with hard-core progressivism, the conference that Sarsour and Ocasio-Cortez headlined on July 29 at The Universal Muslim Association of America was not. Mary Chastain of Legal Insurrection noted how many on social media noted how the conference segregated men and women, among other things. Chastain included two stories that showed how Sarsour and Ocasio-Cortez seem to be made for one another.
Cortez’s extended remarks on Firing Line (via Times of Israel):
On “Firing Line,” host Margaret Hoover asked Ocasio-Cortez “What is your position on Israel?” Ocasio-Cortez responded, “I believe absolutely in Israel’s right to exist.” She added: “I am a proponent of a two-state solution.” The candidate said her previous position on the Gaza clashes “is not a referendum on the State of Israel.”
“The lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer – if 60 people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if 60 people were killed in the South Bronx, unarmed, if 60 people were killed in Puerto Rico – I just look at that [Gaza] incident more through just, as an incident, and to me, it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores,” she said.
“Of course the dynamics there, in terms of geopolitics … is very different than people expressing their First Amendment right to protest,” Hoover replied.
In 2017, Sarsour embraced a terrorist, Rasmea Odeh, at her goodbye gala before she was deported for immigration fraud. She hid her conviction and prison term for blowing up market in Jerusalem that killed two people:
On August 12, 2017, a farewell gala event honoring Rasmea Odeh was held in Chicago by a coalition of anti-Israel groups, and attended by several hundred people.
This coming Thursday, August 17, 2017, Rasmea will be sentenced in federal court in Detroit after a guilty plea to immigration fraud. By her plea agreement, Rasmea will be deported and will lose her U.S. citizenship, but will not serve any further jail time.
Rasmea’s immigration plea resulted from her lies on immigration and naturalization forms in which she concealed a prior conviction and prison term for a 1969 supermarket bombing in Jerusalem that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. Rasmea also concealed her conviction for the attempted bombing of the British Consulate that same year.
[...]
In the introduction of Rasmea, Hatem Abudayyeh of the Rasmea Defense Committee and Arab American Action Network held out Rasmea as “an example to all of us, the absolute personification of our struggle, the worldwide struggle for the liberation of all of historical Palestine.”
When they say the liberation of “all of Palestine,” they mean Israel. That’s why the common BDS chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a call for the destruction of Israel, not an end to the “occupation.”
Rasmea repeated that call: “We are winning this battle with the Zionists, you are winning this battle and we will never stop organizing until all of Palestine is free.”
Sarsour has blamed the “Jewish media” for how she’s perceived. Yeah, Ocasio-Cortez sure knows how to pick them. Then again, these loony toons are the ones you find in the horrid cesspool of socialism.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member