RSS Feed
April 7th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Since being elected to the House in 2018, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been criticized by mainstream Jewish organizations for her alleged lack of engagement. In a Jewish Insider piece from last October, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York CEO Michael Miller lamented about how he hadn’t heard from the congresswoman in two years. “There is a lot of frustration,” he told the website.
This week Ocasio-Cortez finally met with Miller (who is now the outgoing CEO) for a live discussion on a number of topics important to the Jewish community. The representative spoke in great detail on subjects like recent antisemitic attacks and the right-wing, but when Israel/Palestine came up her answers immediately became more hazy. She did criticize Israel’s settlement expansion, but provided little detail. Here’s an excerpt:
Miller: Now let’s deal with a prickly issue, the state of Israel. Israel, as you know, is significant to a vast majority of Jewish New Yorkers. We generally care a lot about Israel’s welfare, its educational and social institutions, and its economy. We travel there, we have families there. We’re greatly concerned over the safety of its people and the security of its borders. Ultimately, we seek an Israel at peace in the Middle East with its neighbors. The mainstream Jewish community supports the establishment of two states for two peoples, as the most sustainable and achievable means for providing justice, as well as human and democratic rights. Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination. What actions do you think can be taken to support movements towards peace, both between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as within the entire region such as the Abraham Accords?
Ocasio-Cortez: Earlier just now, you and I were talking about the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ and I think that when we talk about establishing peace, centering people’s humanities, protecting people’s rights, it’s not just about the ‘what’ and the end goal, which often gets a lot of focus, but I actually think it’s much more about the ‘how’ and the way we are coming together, and how we interpret that ‘what’ and how we act, and the actions we take to that ‘what.’ And so what this is really about is a question, more than anything else, about process. And so we really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected and have equal opportunity to really make sure that we are negotiating in good faith, etcetera.
That being said, I think there’s just this one central issue of settlements because if the ‘what,’ if the ‘what’ that has been decided on is two-state, then the action of settlements — it’s not the how to get to that ‘what’ — and so I think that’s a central thing that we need to make sure that we center and that we value Jewish — rather, we value Israeli — we value the safety and the human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians in that process, that is similar and on equal footing.
So all of that is extremely important in that process. And I do believe [laughs], this may seem flowery, but, and I know people have been saying this for generations, but it is what people need and it is what people want. And the centering and the value of human rights is really, I think, the path to peace here. We have to make sure that we apply principles broadly across, and I’ve done a lot of policy work in this space and to me it is important to apply these principles across. I don’t believe, that just like here in the United States, I don’t believe that children should be detained . . . you know starting on those basic principles of human rights, I think we can build a path to peace together.
AOC has been criticized by pro-Israel groups for a number of her policy positions throughout the years. She’s a cosponsor of Rep. Betty McCollum’s historic child detention bill, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s boycott bill, and was one of the only House members to vote against 2019’s anti-BDS resolution. Last fall, she backed out of an event honoring the legacy of late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after she faced backlash from Palestinians. That move generated an apoplectic reaction from the pro-Israel crowd, with some even claiming she was damaging the peace process.
Miller avoided these topics altogether and it remains to be seen how AOC navigates these topics with Jewish organizations going forward.
“Hopefully this is just an opening for having those lengthy and more intense conversations,” Miller told her at the end of the interview.
Posted in 
Tags: 
