“It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it. That is a core tenet of solidarity,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is facing a political firestorm after the organization promoted a pro-Palestine rally in the wake of Hamas militants’ attacks on Israeli communities.
The group did not organize Sunday’s rally, its leadership said Monday. But several lawmakers with DSA ties are distancing themselves from what was said at the event.
“It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it. That is a core tenet of solidarity,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) and one of six DSA members in Congress, said in a statement late Monday — her first comments on the rally.
“The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment. It also did not speak for the thousands of New Yorkers who are capable of rejecting both Hamas’ horrifying attacks against innocent civilians as well as the grave injustices and violence Palestinians face under occupation,” she said.
Its because a lot of the talking points fundamentally are anti-israeli people.
A huge push is made to argue that we must not equate Hamas (the closest thing Gaza has to a government) with Palestine. I very much argue this.
There is nowhere near as much of a push to not equate Netanyahu/The IDF/Mossad with Israel. I myself am guilty of doing this a lot of the time much in the same way I refer to “America” in Iraq and so forth.
And what that means is that people are arguing that the Israeli People are guilty of crimes, but the Palestinian people are not.
Same with all of the “the only answer is to roll the borders back to the 60s and engage in a two state solution” that ignore that the vast majority of the “settlers” are the descendants or immigrants and not the people who stole the land in the first place (a common issue with dealing with colonial powers). Its inherently a statement that the right of the Israeli civillians matters less than the Palestinian.
And we can see it with the reaction to the horrors of the past few days. There is a strong undercurrent of “we need a cease fire immediately”. I agree with this, but it also inherently states that the Israeli civillians and the foreigners don’t deserve any “justice” for their death and suffering but the Palestinians do.
And when you are rolling all these talking points together? It very much paints a picture of The Israeli People are at fault and deserve whatever they get. Which… becomes really easy to twist that into “Fucking Jews”
And it is one of the reasons that I actively do not have an opinion on what should be done right now. I want peace and I want The Country of Israel to answer for their decades of apartheid and atrocities. But I also understand that said atrocities were not one sided and the past 36 or so hours are very much in direct response to terrorist attacks by what is effectively a government that lives literally next door.
Its similar to the tendency to use passive and active voice to steer public opinion. The festival goers were killed, but the Palestinian civilians died. The former indicates active malice whereas the latter sounds like it is an unavoidable tragedy.