By David Harsanyi
Monday, July 16, 2018
How can someone know so little about a topic yet be so
passionate about it? That’s what I kept asking myself while re-watching a clip
of media darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussing Gaza and Israel.
After dramatically defeating Democratic Caucus Chair Joe
Crowley, there was a rush to proclaim the young, dynamic socialist
Ocasio-Cortez the future of the Democratic Party. Well, if she portends the
future, then it’s worth taking her words seriously. Even if we overlook the
fact that Ocasio-Cortez’s self-identified ideology has led to more suffering
and death than any other in history, her propensity to embrace positions she
knows absolutely nothing about is, well, curious.
This week on the new “Firing Line” on PBS — a program
claiming to be a reboot of the famous debate show, where William Buckley once
politely dismantled his guests’ weak arguments — Ocasio-Cortez was asked about
Israel. A few months ago, she claimed that Israel Defense Forces was mass
murdering civilians, and that Democrats should not silent on the crimes of
Israel anymore.
Ocasio-Cortez: Well, yes, but I also think that what people are
starting to see in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of
humanitarian conditions and that to me is just where I tend to come from on
this issue.
Margaret Hoover: You use the term the “occupation of Palestine,”
what did you mean by that?
Ocasio-Cortez: Oh, I think, what I meant is that the settlements
that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are
experiencing difficulty in access to housing and homes.
Hoover: Do you think you can expand on that?
Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah I think … [laughing] I am not the expert on
geo-politics on this issue. You now, for me, I’m a firm believer in finding a
two-state solution in this issue. And I’m happy to sit down with leaders on
both of these… for me, I just look at things through a human rights lens, and I
may not use the right words– I know this is a very intense issue.
Hoover nods and smiles through Ocasio-Cortez’s string of
barely coherent platitudes, without challenging her in any genuine way.
For one thing, there’s no such thing, nor has there ever
been such a thing, as an Arab “Palestine.” There are a number of books
Ocasio-Cortez could read about Arab history — or about the Turks or the
Ottomans or the Jewish presence in Israel going back to 1500 BC, or even about
situation that existed from 1947-1967 — but nowhere will she ever find a
chapter on an independent Arab nation-state called “Palestine.” The idea itself
is largely a post-World War II invention. You might hope that a Palestine will
one day exist, but none has ever existed before.
Second, Ocasio-Cortez might not know this, but there are
no “increasing settlements” in Gaza, the topic of the initial tweet Hoover was
asking about, because there are no settlements in Gaza. In 2005, Israel
conceded Gaza a large amount of autonomy, and with it the ability to conduct
multi-party elections and live peacefully with its neighbors. In the process
Israel dismantled all Israeli “settlements” in the Gaza Strip and expelled
around 8,000 Jews who would have been massacred otherwise.
It’s debatable that Gaza can even be described as
“occupied.” It was the Palestinians who decided to elect Hamas, and Hamas that
decided to engage in the murder of its political opponents and then a suicidal
struggle with Israel, rather than concern itself in any serious way with the
humanitarian conditions of its own people.
Then again, maybe Ocasio-Cortez is just conflating Gaza
with the West Bank, and believes in the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the
latter area. Perhaps she believes, like Hamas, that Israel itself is a
“settlement”? Ocasio-Cortez says she supports Israel’s “right to exist,” but
perhaps one day she can clarify what that means to her.
Ocasio-Cortez might also be unaware that it’s not only
Israel that implements sanctions against Gaza — because, after all, every time
it loosens them, the first thing Hamas does is import weapons — but Egypt and
the internationally recognized Palestinian authority of the West Bank. They all
impose sanctions against Gaza because Gaza isn’t merely the home of a terror
organization, it allies with other terror organizations around the world and
Iran (but I repeat myself).
Worst of all, though, after admitting she really doesn’t
know anything about the situation, Ocasio-Cortez still argues that what the IDF
did to thousands of violent rioters, who attempted to bum rush the border and
attack civilians on the other side, was no different than a domestic police
force massacring peaceful protesters in the United States.
The lens through which I saw this
incident as an activist, as an organizer — 60 people were killed in Ferguson,
Missouri, 60 people were killed in the South Bronx, unarmed, 60 people were
killed in Puerto Rico — I just look at that incident … just as an incident, and
to me it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores.
We know that Hamas was using civilians as human shields
and cannon fodder, and the resulting death tolls as propaganda. We know that
many of the most dramatic instances of Israeli violence, including a young
child dying at the riots, were more examples of Hamas playing the Western
media. We know that at least 20 of those shot by IDF snipers were members of
the military wing of Hamas, which is to say the terror wing.
The problem with seeing things through the lens of an
“activist” or an “organizer” first is that you’re enticed to take positions that
align with your preconceived ideological notions about oppression and
“colonizers” rather than the facts. Then again, reflexively anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic positions are becoming standard among the activist Left that
Ocasio-Cortez aligns herself with. So it’s not really surprising to see
socialists embrace it. But is it the future position of the Democratic Party?
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