The Electronic Intifada 18 July 2024
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez poses with President Joe Biden during an event on Earth Day in Triangle, Virginia, on 22 April. (via Twitter)
Prominent Democratic progressives are rallying to save Joe Biden’s presidential bid following a disastrous debate performance last month.
Despite conservative estimates indicating that 186,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza under Biden’s unwavering material and moral support for Israel’s genocide, prominent progressives do not believe this disqualifies him from being the Democratic nominee.
On the contrary, they are rallying behind the president even as establishment members of the party are skeptical or abandoning his sinking ship altogether.
In the hours, days and weeks following the debate, certain liberal mainstream media, Democratic politicians and members of the donor class turned against Biden as their long-standing effort to cover up his cognitive decline collapsed on the CNN stage.
As the debate ended, op-eds and editorials began appearing across liberal media, highlighting what many had observed for years: Biden is not in good shape.
Progressives remained largely silent in the days immediately following the debate, while Biden’s campaign and family members insisted he would not be stepping aside.
But after a few days, as the campaign to oust Biden continued to pick up steam, progressives rallied to his side in an effort to rescue his sinking candidacy.
“Best president of my lifetime”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Capitol Hill following the 4 July weekend that “Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race and I support him.”
Ocasio-Cortez is steadfast in her effort to reelect the president, even as she previously described his administration-backed Israeli war on Gaza as an “unfolding genocide.” The congresswoman even shamed the Biden administration for vetoing a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire.
“The Biden admin can no longer reconcile their professed concern for Palestinians and human rights while also single-handedly vetoing the UN’s call for ceasefire and sidestepping the entire US Congress to unconditionally back the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in December.
Despite all that, Ocasio-Cortez has not used her power to pressure Biden into implementing a ceasefire in any immediate way, and has been enthusiastic about his campaign for months.
She now treats the ceasefire as one detail that Biden and his campaign are working to “secure” – pushed by Ocasio-Cortez as a strategic move to strengthen Biden’s chances in November.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who in February correctly accused the Biden administration of “greenlighting the massacre of Palestinians,” praised and endorsed him following the debate.
Omar blasted the Biden administration for “fail[ing] to meaningfully pressure Israel through aid restrictions, sanctions or any hint of consequences.”
Omar added: “The administration continues to provide unconditional military aid, bypassing Congress to send $735 million more in bombs that rain down daily on a trapped civilian population with nowhere to go or flee.”
Despite not a single one of those policies changing since Omar made her statement, and the horrific US-armed Israeli massacres only escalating, her tone has fully shifted.
“He’s been the best president of my lifetime, and we have his back,” the lawmaker said, according to The Washington Post.
Ocasio-Cortez, among other progressives, was credited with stabilizing his campaign in the aftermath of the debate, according to an unnamed source familiar with the internal House Democratic discussions, the Post reported.
Senator Bernie Sanders, who persisted in refusing to call for a ceasefire even after Israel had already massacred 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza, also placed his eggs in Biden’s basket.
“I will do all that I can to see that President Biden is re-elected,” he opined in The New York Times on Saturday.
With fleeting mention that he “strongly disagree[s]” with Biden on US support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, the Vermont senator does not consider the US-funded genocide to be significant enough to withhold his support.
“He’s our nominee and I think we’re losing the plot here,” Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley, another progressive Democrat, said last week.
As the Democratic National Convention taking place in Chicago looms in August, Rashida Tlaib has been silent about whether or not she will endorse Biden, despite herself being of Palestinian origin.
Earlier this year, Tlaib declined to respond on whether or not she will endorse Biden in November, but encouraged people not to sit out the election and to think of “pro-ceasefire” candidates on the ballot.
As progressives rallied to Biden’s defense, his administration restarted the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel, briefly paused supposedly “to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza.”
Losing progressive base
Ocasio-Cortez turning her back on Palestinians and their supporters is beginning to erode her progressive base, which was critical in propelling her into the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections.
The Democratic Socialists of America finally withdrew their endorsement of the congresswoman citing those reasons, although their New York chapter kept its endorsement.
For a politician to earn DSA endorsement, they must abide by certain conditions.
Those include publicly opposing all US funding to Israel, including the Iron Dome anti-missile system, opposing all criminalization of anti-Zionism and its conflation with anti-Semitism, and publicly supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
DSA said that it had “not seen evidence” of Ocasio-Cortez meeting the conditions they had set when members voted to endorse her.
“A national DSA endorsement comes with a serious commitment to the movement for Palestine and our collective socialist project,” DSA stated.
Another indication that her progressive base is no longer buying what she and other self-described progressives are selling is the relatively low turnout at a rally featuring herself, Sanders and Congressman Jamaal Bowman – three supposed superstars of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez once set records for the largest rallies for a Democrat, drawing tens of thousands of people in 2020. That is no longer the case.
The rally was to support Bowman’s Democratic congressional primary, though he later lost to a candidate more closely aligned with establishment Democrats after Israel lobby giant AIPAC invested $14.5 million – an unprecedented amount for a congressional race – in the race.
Anti-genocide protesters demonstrated at the rally in the Bronx, New York, protesting Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Biden.
The activist group Within Our Lifetime, which organized the protest, implored people to join them “to protest Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign rally in the Bronx as she continues to endorse and support Genocide Joe alongside Bernie Sanders and Jamaal Bowman.”
The group asserted that “Zionists and sell-out politicians are no allies to the Palestinian people and they are not welcome in our communities.”
While the Israel lobby played a significant role in influencing the race and contributing to Bowman’s defeat, this shouldn’t absolve his years of pandering to the same lobby that helped oust him.
Bowman has also taken part in a junket organized by the Zionist lobby group J Street. In September 2021, Bowman voted for additional funding for the Iron Dome. This and other pandering by Bowman spurred a movement by grassroots members late in 2021 to expel him from the Democratic Socialists of America.Ocasio-Cortez initially voted against the same resolution, but changed her vote to present. C-SPAN footage of the congresswoman crying and being comforted by other lawmakers circulated on social media.
Ocasio-Cortez then penned a letter blaming her last-minute change from “no” to “present” on the bill being rushed.
“To those I have disappointed – I am deeply sorry. To those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice – I understand,” she wrote.
Comes as no surprise
Ocasio-Cortez’s unconditional endorsement of Biden should come as no surprise, considering her trajectory over the past nine months since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.
In October, Ocasio-Cortez co-sponsored a resolution that took at face value the Israeli military’s now-revised claim that the Palestinian militant and political organization Hamas had killed 1,400 people in Israel on 7 October.
By the time the bill was voted on, Israel had revised this number down to 1,200. It is now indisputable fact that Hamas was not responsible for all Israeli casualties on that day and that Israel employed the Hannibal Directive against its own military and citizens.
But this bill was never revised.
The same bill also called Hamas’ military operation on 7 October, which various other Palestinian groups and individuals apparently participated in, a “terrorist” attack – completely devoid of the context that Hamas emerged out of a besieged and bombarded coastal enclave that has been blockaded, starved and kept on a lifeline by the Israeli government with intermittent bombing campaigns since 2006.
In February, Ocasio-Cortez followed this up by voting in favor of a House resolution endorsing and promoting Israel’s debunked and discredited atrocity propaganda that Hamas carried out mass rapes on 7 October.
Ocasio-Cortez receives credit for voting against a bill in November that would send over $14 billion of military aid to Israel, as well as another bill in April that would see the US send $17 billion in weapons for Israel.
After voting “no,” Ocasio-Cortez was the only member of the progressive Squad to sign a letter appeasing the Israel lobby and affirming support for Israel’s Iron Dome system – compare that to the apology letter she wrote to her constituents less than three years earlier.
“We believe strongly in Israel’s right to self-defense and have joined colleagues previously in affirming our shared commitment,” the letter reads.
“All of us support strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems and we are committed to a sovereign, safe, and secure future for Israel.”
Rather than being a “defensive” weapon, as Ocasio-Cortez claims, the system is designed to provide Israel with a shield of impunity to enable it to attack and kill Palestinians and steal their land without consequence.
It’s the equivalent of giving a mass shooter a bullet-proof vest.
She is also credited for speaking out about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on the House floor and occasional tweets about Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
While such statements coming from a US congresswoman may please some, they do not contribute to leveraging her power towards halting the Gaza genocide.
As one member of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez obviously does not have the power by herself to stop the flow of American weapons to Israel. But she does have the power to refuse her high-profile endorsement of the man sending those weapons, or at least to make such an endorsement contingent on the president halting the shipments.
Her statements would appear to be aimed merely at pacifying her base. But they haven’t even done that.
Ocasio-Cortez snapped at a group of protesters at a movie theater in Brooklyn in March as they confronted her for refusing “to call it a genocide.”
As she walked out of the building, one protester told her, “We’re just talking to you like normal people. Just say it’s a genocide. Just say it. Over 30,000 people are dead, AOC. You can’t just say it for once?”
Ocasio-Cortez appeared frustrated by the confrontation.
“I already said that it was, and y’all are just gonna pretend that it wasn’t over and over again,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“It’s fucked up, man. And you’re not helping these people,” the New York congresswoman added.
Appeasing the Israel lobby
Ocasio-Cortez has also attempted to balance her already restrained calls for a ceasefire by appeasing the Israel lobby.
In November, she voted for a resolution asserting “that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of anti-Semitism.”
Several progressive politicians, including Omar, Pressley and Bowman, also supported the resolution.
Missouri progressive Congresswoman Cori Bush did not vote.
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan voted “present” and did not vote against the resolution, despite calling it “a one-sided attempt to rewrite history.”
The only member of Congress who voted against the resolution was Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky.
“I agree with the title ‘Reaffirming the State of Israel’s Right to Exist’ and much of the language, but I’m voting ‘no’ on the resolution because it equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism,” Massie wrote on X.
Accepting Israel’s “right to exist” as a Jewish state is indistinguishable from accepting the legitimacy of Zionism – Israel’s state ideology, predicated on the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland solely because they are not Jewish.
Israel’s existence as a “Jewish” state is fundamentally an expansionist, ethno-nationalist settler-colonial project.
Voting for a resolution that conflates opposition to a racist project designed to subjugate Palestinians, with anti-Semitism, which is anti-Jewish bigotry, aims to vilify and delegitimize critics of Israel.
In June, Ocasio-Cortez platformed two Israel lobbyists, Amy Spitalnick and Stacy Burdett, on a livestream inviting them to discuss anti-Semitism, while defining them as “two of some of the most foremost experts in the country in fighting anti-Semitism in America.”
Spitalnick heads the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a pro-Israel advocacy group, and Burdett is a lobbyist who previously worked at the Anti-Defamation League for 24 years.
The ADL is an Israel lobby group that masquerades as a civil rights organization. The group routinely smears pro-Palestine activists as engaging in anti-Semitism.
Ocasio-Cortez failed to push back on their repeated conflations of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism on the livestream she hosted, or their misrepresentations of 7 October, merely giving a disclaimer at some point that she and the guests do not agree on everything.
“The three of us do not hold the same positions when it comes to the war and the role that we believe the United States must play,” the congresswoman says.
Spitalnick tried to defend Zionism and conflate exclusion of Zionists from progressive spaces with anti-Semitism by claiming that the vast majority of American Jews have some kind of relationship with Israel.
Ocasio-Cortez failed to push back on these points, and instead delivered a word salad on Zionism: “the muddying of this term and how so many people have different; they engage in different definitions of this term, utilizing it in different ways, and that then creates an opening and a spectrum here.”
It’s worth noting that Spitalnick has helped spread Israel’s atrocity propaganda claiming without any credible evidence, and based on proven lies, that Hamas fighters used rape as a weapon of war on a wide scale on 7 October.
Spitalnick insists that the “rape, kidnapping and murder of Israeli women and girls” took place on 7 October by Hamas fighters, despite there being no evidence of systematic rape taking place.
She also urged people to “read every word” of the now infamous article – “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” – shortly after it was published in December.
The article has been completely debunked by independent journalists including The Electronic Intifada, and caused turmoil inside The New York Times, but Spitalnick’s tweet remains up.
Spitalnick labels anyone who calls these lies “atrocity propaganda” as guilty of playing into “broader anti-Semitic denial of 7 October.”
The DSA cited the panel hosted by Ocasio-Cortez in their statement announcing the withdrawal of their endorsement.
“On this panel, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were conflated and boycotting Zionist institutions was condemned,” DSA wrote.
“This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide through political and direct action in recent months, and in decades past.”
Not serious
Progressive politicians, chiefly Ocasio-Cortez, were never truly committed to using their political leverage to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
If they had been serious, they could at a minimum have conditioned their endorsement and campaigning for Biden on a ceasefire or immediate cessation of weapons.
And even that would have been a disgrace, as it does not absolve Biden of a genocide he perpetrated and refuses to put an end to, that will affect generations even if a ceasefire is implemented today.
That alone should have, at the very least, disqualified him as the Democratic nominee in the eyes of progressives, regardless of whether or not he stops the slaughter before November.
The actions of the New York congresswoman over the last nine months of genocide, and even before, have demonstrated that she is playing a balancing act.
Ocasio-Cortez does the bare minimum to keep her progressive base pacified or at least divided, while doing as much as she can get away with to appease the Israel lobby and establishment Democrats.
Since the beginning of her political career, Ocasio-Cortez has always spoken out of both sides of her mouth.
But the ongoing genocide makes these contradictions impossible to conceal.
The bottom line is that progressives cannot claim to oppose the genocide while simultaneously supporting the one man who is ensuring that it continues.
By endorsing Joe Biden, progressives are effectively backing genocide.
Ali Abunimah contributed analysis.
Tamara Nassar is associate editor of The Electronic Intifada.
