No response from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez silent as Jewish anger rises on social media.
By Pesach Benson, United With Israel
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is under fire after one of her staffers called Israel a “racist European ethnostate” in an Instagram post last week.
In a now-deleted post, Hussain Altamimi, a legislative assistant in Ocasio-Cortez’s office wrote, “Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!” Fox News obtained screenshots of the post.
According to Fox, the comments were in response to a post Altamimi shared from a separate account with the handle “Let’s Talk Palestine.” That post argued that Israeli society is built on a “racial hierarchy.”
“This reveals the principle underpinning Israeli apartheid: It’s not about where you’re born,” the shared post reads. “It’s about whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish. Your ethnicity determines your rights [and] level in the racial hierarchy,” Altamimi wrote.
“Israel is an exclusive ethnostate, established to serve one ethnic group at the expense of another,” the post continued.
Altamimi’s Instagram account is private and has 356 followers.
“Let’s Talk Palestine” has 249,000 followers and identifies itself as a nonprofit organization. Some of its previous Instagram posts include titles such as “The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem,” “Apartheid: Palestinian Citizens of Israel” and “Why Zionism Needed the Nakba.”
Ocasio-Cortez has so far maintained silence, even as Jews are angry and challenged the progressive Congresswoman on Twitter.
Sia Kodestani, an American Jew born in Iran, tweeted to the congresswoman, “Your staffer Hussain Altamimi says Israel is ‘a racist European ethnostate.’ That’s wrong for many reasons, and it erases Mizrahi Jews like me. A majority of Jewish Israelis are descendents of 850,000 Jews violently expelled from Arab countries. Will you call him out?”
Altamimi’s post is the latest in a string of antisemitism controversies related to Ocasio-Cortez. In September she sought to block U.S. financial assistance for Israel to replenish its stockpile of Iron Dome interceptors. In July, Ocasio-Cortez and fellow progressive Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) called for the Treasury Dept. to strip tax-exempt status from U.S. charities “supporting” Israeli settlements.
Last year, AOC pointedly cancelled her attendance at a memorial for Yitzhak Rabin.
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