Monday was not a good day for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her boyfriend, Riley Roberts.
The two appeared to be leaving the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in New York City on Monday afternoon when a group of anti-Israel protesters confronted the leader of the so-called “Squad.”
At issue for the far-left protesters was the fact that AOC, who along with her fellow Democratic Socialists demanded Israel deescalate in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, has as of yet not specifically used the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Their heated exchange was… not productive. At one point, a clearly frustrated AOC cut loose with the “f” bomb because she was worried that they would take her out of context, something she’s done to her political opposition countless times:
“I need you to understand that this is not OK,” she told one male protester who held an iPhone near her face.“It’s not OK that there’s a genocide happening and you’re not actively against it,” the protester shot back.[…]The protesters continued to trail behind the Democrat, who was visibly aggravated as she made her way toward the exit. Between sets of escalators, Ocasio-Cortez got in the face of the protesters to again defend herself before walking away.[…]“You’re gonna cut it … and you’re gonna clip this so that it’s completely out of context,” Ocasio-Cortez fumed.The congresswoman has not publicly called Israel’s retaliatory bombardment in Gaza a genocide, but on Monday she suggested otherwise.“I already said that it was and y’all are just gonna pretend that it wasn’t over and over again. It’s f–ked up, man,” she railed. “And you’re not helping these people, and you’re not helping them, you’re not helping them.”
Watch:
Contra what she told the agitators, AOC has not characterized Israel’s actions as “genocide.” When asked during a January “Meet the Press” interview about whether she thought genocide was taking place, she skirted around the question.
Instead, she referenced the “young people” (Hamas sympathizers like the ones who confronted her Monday) across the country, who she said were “appalled” at what they were seeing. She cited unverified (and likely inflated) stats that have come from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. She also said that, in her view, the people of Gaza were facing a “mass inhumanity”:
KRISTEN WELKER: Some of your colleagues – and we talked about what’s happened at the protests this week have called the president “Genocide Joe.” Some of your colleagues have accused the president of supporting genocide, including Rashida Tlaib. Do you agree with that word, genocide, that the president’s been supporting a genocide? Or does that go too far?
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I think what we are seeing right now throughout the country is that young people are appalled at the violence and the indiscriminate loss of life. We are not just seeing 25,000 people that have died in Gaza. We are seeing the starvation of – of millions of people, the displacement of over 2 million Gazans. We have South Africa that has mounted a court in the ICJ. The ICJ ruled this week that Israel has a grave responsibility to prevent genocide.
[…]I believe that – [the ICJ is] still determining it, but in the interim ruling, the fact that they said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing.
Watch:
Even if the protesters were promoting a message I agreed with, I would still not be a fan of this type of ambush-style confronting of politicians. But AOC is saying in December 2020, as Republican and Democrat politicians (and random people on the street) were being harassed by “Defund the Police” radicals that, it was acceptable because the purpose was to make them uncomfortable:
Hmm. The saying “You reap what you sow” comes to mind here…
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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