Kshama Sawant@cmkshama
@AOC's NO vote on the amendment to cut $500 million of U.S. funding to the Israeli military is utterly indefensible, and amounts to support for the genocide in Gaza. And except for the handful of them like @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN, the same goes for every single one of AOC’s fellow rotten self-described “progressives” in the Democratic Party who have also voted for Israeli military funding, including Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna.
AOC's gaslighting attempts at justifying her action exposes her even further. She admits Israel is committing a genocide and apparently thinks working people are stupid enough not to see through her claim that funding for Israel’s Iron Dome is acceptable because it’s a “defensive” weapon. No aspect of this genocidal regime’s military can be considered "defensive."
Iron Dome, Arrow, David's Sling — all funded by those $500 million — are part of the slaughter and genocide hardware of the Israeli state. They have allowed Israel to not only carry out slaughter in Gaza with impunity, but also attack Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Israel has bombed Yemen on NINE separate occasions just since May of this year. There is nothing defensive, or defensible, about any of this.
That slaughter apparatus would be impossible without the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. military funding and the unconditional political backing from the U.S. state and its two parties, Democrats and Republicans.
It’s good that the leadership of the @DemSocialists publicly spoke in opposition to AOC's vote. It’s also important that the national DSA leadership withdrew their endorsement of her last year over the issue of Israel and Gaza. But @nycDSA — which includes New York City Democratic Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — did not withdraw their endorsement.
No politician who is voting in favor of this genocide deserves one more working-class vote. AOC is doing the bidding of the Zionists and the warmongers. She is making sure that she votes enough on the side of U.S. imperialism’s agenda in the Middle East so as to signal to them that she is malleable for their interests. While she is less blatant than the most open warmongers in her party, it is a complete betrayal of working and oppressed people only made worse by AOC calling herself a socialist.
In September 2021, AOC voted “PRESENT” on a bill to give a billion dollars to Israel’s Iron Dome, which is equivalent to abstaining on this critical vote and refusing to oppose it. She chose to stand on the sidelines as a billion dollars in military aid went to a state that had been carrying out a shockingly brutal occupation of Palestinian lands for over seven decades.
All of last year, AOC uncritically backed Biden for President, despite his administration arming Israel to the teeth. Then, at the Democratic National Convention In August, AOC said that Kamala Harris was working “tirelessly” for a ceasefire in Gaza. It was patently obvious that the Biden-Harris administration was not only doing nothing to stop what became the current genocide, but Biden-Harris, the Democrats, and the Republicans were backing Israel to the hilt and giving lucrative contracts to U.S. weapons corporations. In fact, Jack Lew, Biden’s ambassador to Israel, openly boasted about how the Biden-Harris administration never exerted any pressure on Israel to stop bombing Gaza: “Nothing that we ever said was, just stop the war.”
In November of last year, AOC sided with the Anti-Defamation League, a powerful Israel lobby group, by voting YES on a disgusting resolution that equates criticism of the Israeli state to anti-Semitism, which is intended, and will be wielded, as a weapon of repression against the antiwar movement.
Ending the genocide and the brutal occupation will require building a powerful antiwar movement to defeat the forces of U.S. imperialism in order to win an end to all military funding for Israel. That means mass strike action and mass protests and civil disobedience. It means elected leaders in the U.S. Congress who will not only consistently vote against funding the genocide, but also use their office to mobilize an army of hundreds of thousands of working people to fight the Democratic and Republican Parties, the Zionist lobby, and the billionaires profiting from war and genocide. Democrats like AOC are doing none of this. Voting the right way is the lowest possible bar, and AOC has repeatedly failed to even do that.
