Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday declined to join critics who accuse Israel of genocide in its actions in Gaza, but said American society should not “toss someone out of our public discourse” for doing so.
Following the International Court of Justice’s order to Israel to work to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, the Democratic representative from New York argued on Meet the Press that “large amounts of Americans” think “genocide” is the right term for what is happening in Gaza.
“The fact that [the ICJ] 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,” she said.
“Whether you are an individual that believes this is a genocide – which by the way, in our polling we are seeing large amounts of Americans concerned specifically with that word. So I don’t think that it is something to completely toss someone out of our public discourse for using.”
Ocasio-Cortez has condemned Hamas’s attack on 7 October “in the strongest possible terms” and has at the same time been a vocal proponent of a ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
“We are not just seeing 25,000 people that have died in Gaza,” she said. “We are seeing the starvation of millions of people, the displacement of over 2 million Gazans.”
Some of Ocasio-Cortez’s allies in Congress, such as the progressive Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, have gone further, arguing that Joe Biden is supporting genocide in Gaza. Asked to respond, Ocasio-Cortez said: “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.”
On the Democrats’ policy agenda and messaging, she argued that the party “can certainly do more to be advancing our vision” but added: “I believe we have a strong vision that we can run on.” She praised Biden for his promise to enshrine reproductive rights in law should he remain president and Democrats take hold of both chambers of Congress, and affirmed that Biden is the strongest candidate among current Democratic political leaders to defeat Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
“I think we can do more,” she added. “I think we need to be talking more about healthcare. Of course me, as a progressive, I want to see the age of Medicare drop – whether it’s to 50 [years old] as the president has discussed earlier, or to zero, as is my preference.”
