With consummate cynicism, Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), on Tuesday posted a tweet on X criticizing the Biden-Harris administration over the “horrors” in Gaza due to an “unrestrained” Israel “fully armed by the Biden administration.”
Denouncing the Israeli blocking of food aid and bombing of hospitals in northern Gaza as a genocide of Palestinians, she called for an “arms embargo now.”
Her post came two days after the Pentagon announced the deployment to Israel of an advanced THAAD anti-missile system battery and 100 US troops to operate it on the ground, a major escalation of US support and involvement in the expanding Israeli war of extermination in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and, in the coming days, Iran. The THAAD deployment is part of the agreement reached in a telephone call between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to launch a massive military strike against Iran.
Significantly, Ocasio-Cortez did not mention the THAAD deployment or the imminent attack on Iran in her X post.
The DSA Democrat is a stalwart supporter of the Biden administration, which has from the onset of the Israeli campaign of mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza last October 7 provided the Zionist regime with the arms and political and diplomatic support required for it to carry out its ethnic cleansing and genocide. She was among the most dogged supporters of Biden’s reelection campaign until the day he dropped out, and since then has unreservedly promoted the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who fully backs Israel and the coming war with Iran.
In fact, Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet is part of a coordinated effort by the Democrats and the Biden administration to provide political cover for their ongoing support for Israeli war crimes and the launching of a full-scale regional war embracing the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. This bloodbath is driven by US plans, using its attack dog Israel, to recolonize the oil-rich Middle East and loot its vast resources in order to strengthen its hand in its war with Russia and coming war with China.
Ocasio-Cortez posted her tweet a day after Harris posted an X tweet criticizing Israel for blocking food supplies into northern Gaza, adding the pro-forma demand that “civilians must be protected” and “international humanitarian law must be respected.” On Sunday, the US secretaries of state and defense sent a letter to Israel’s defense minister and minister of strategic affairs warning Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza within the next 30 days or face a suspension of military aid.
Similar empty threats were issued last April and were basically ignored by Israel, with no repercussions, and the same outcome is intended today.
Ocasio-Cortez’s hypocrisy and complicity—and that of the DSA—are underscored by the fake “progressive” Democrat’s own words and actions. Just over a week ago, on the one-year anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas breakout from the Israeli blockade and incursion into Israel, the congresswoman issued an official statement that for the most part tracked verbatim the propaganda tropes of the Biden administration and imperialist backers of Israel around the world.
She placed the blame for the carnage that ensued on Hamas and presented Israel’s response as a legitimate exercise in self-defense. There was no mention of the 75 years of ethnic cleansing, brutal repression and occupation of Palestinian lands inflicted by Israel, with massive US support, since the formation of the Zionist state in 1948, or the more recent recurring invasions of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces.
She repeated all of the unsubstantiated claims by Israel about the October 7 breakout, writing:
The violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, murdering more than 1,200 people and kidnapping hundreds of innocent men, women and children, was a crime against humanity and an atrocity that will shock generations to come. It was the single deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Following some hollow words about enforcing humanitarian standards and not allowing the conflict to escalate, she called for a ceasefire and the withholding of “offensive” [not “defensive”] military support when “US humanitarian law… is violated.”
She then retailed the slander that anti-Gaza genocide protests are driven by antisemitism, declaring that “All of us must protect our Jewish communities at home and abroad from rising antisemitism.”
Last spring, when the Biden administration was overseeing police attacks on peaceful student protests against the Gaza genocide on US campuses, the New York Times published a column explaining Ocasio-Cortez’s critical value, as an “outsider and insider,” in propping up Biden. It specifically defined her role as “to channel [the protesters’] righteous anger into a political movement,” i.e., into the Democratic Party’s 2024 election campaign.
The Hill published an article headlined “Ocasio-Cortez emerges as key Biden surrogate for progressives, young people.” The publication quoted a Biden campaign spokesman as saying the president was “proud to have earned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s support, and we look forward to working with her and our entire Democratic coalition to defeat Donald Trump this November.”
In April, she appeared with Biden at a publicity event on Earth Day to promote the administration’s energy policies, and in an interview at the end of April with former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan she called Biden “a decent man” whose actions have “led to de-escalation” in Gaza.”
Following Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump in June, Ocasio-Cortez, along with most of the so-called “progressives” in Congress, staunchly defended his candidacy against those in the Democratic Party and the media who were calling for him to pull out. Speaking outside of the Capitol on July 8, she said, “Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race, and I support him.”
This was, it should be noted, after the highly respected medical journal The Lancet had published its article concluding that at least 186,000 people had been killed as a result of the US/Israeli onslaught on Gaza, some 8 percent of the pre-war population of the enclave.
Since Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, Ocasio-Cortez has just as staunchly supported the candidacy of Harris, despite the vice president’s continual shift further and further to the right. The DSA Democrat has specifically and publicly supported the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, which threatens to trigger a nuclear holocaust.
At the Democratic National Convention in August, Ocasio-Cortez declared that Harris “is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.” Her lying statement was met with thunderous applause by those in attendance. The Harris campaign quickly clipped Ocasio-Cortez’s comments and shared them across social media platforms.
Such is the record of this so-called “progressive,” whose opportunism is rivaled only by her contempt for the intelligence of the American people. Ocasio-Cortez thinks that she can turn her “moral indignation” at the mass slaughter in Gaza on and off like a spigot and no one will notice. But, of course, all she succeeds in doing is further discrediting herself, her fake socialist and pro-imperialist party, and the type of middle class radical politics that rejects Marxism and the lessons of the revolutionary working class struggles of the past century-and-a-quarter that are embodied in the Trotskyist movement, the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International.
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