AOC claims Palestinian children are being put in cages in the West Bank
- In Austin, Texas to rally support for House candidates Greg Casar and Jessica Cisneros, the New York Democrat was heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester
- 'With media, with all this stuff, Palestine is basically a banned word. It's censored. We don't talk about it. No one knows about it,' she said
- She pushed back on charges of anti-semitism leveled against some of Israel's biggest critics in the House, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib
- 'Believing in the basic human dignity and the ability for a person to not be jailed or beaten for who they are, it does not mean that you are bigoted,' she said
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed over the weekend that children are being put in cages by Israelis in the West Bank, as she said the media 'censors' Palestinian concerns.
In Austin, Texas to rally support for progressive House candidates Greg Casar and Jessica Cisneros, the New York Democrat was heckled by a pro-Palestinian protester as she was promoting the Green New Deal.
'With media, with all this stuff, Palestine is basically a banned word. It's censored. We don't talk about it. No one knows about it,' she said. 'Thank you for bringing it up, honestly, because we shouldn't have to tiptoe around these things. We should be able to talk about it. And we shouldn't allow people's humanity to be censored.'
She pushed back on charges of anti-semitism leveled against some of Israel's biggest critics in the House, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
'Believing in the basic human dignity and the ability for a person to not be jailed or beaten for who they are, it does not mean that you are bigoted against any other community,' she said, according to Jewish Insider. 'And we gotta call that for what it is.'
'I don't believe a child should be in a cage in the West Bank.'
Ocasio-Cortez did not provide examples of children being locked in cages in the West Bank.
In May, Ocasio-Cortez said that Americans 'are scared to stand up to the incarceration of children in Palestine', speaking on the House floor on May 14.
The area at the time was experiencing some of its worst violence since 2014, and Joe Biden had asserted Israel's right to defend itself.
'The president stated that Israel has a right to self-defense. Do Palestinians have a right to survive?' Ocasio-Cortez said.
The Biden administration issued its most forceful public condemnation of Israel's West Bank settlements yet on Tuesday, when State Department spokesman Ned Price compared them to 'illegal outposts' in remarks to reporters.
Price said the US government will 'strongly oppose' such expansion on occupied Palestinian land.
The Biden official's criticism was some of the strongest in years on Israel after previous leader Donald Trump gave his blessing to settlements and annexations.
'We are deeply concerned about the Israeli government's plan to advance thousands of settlement units,' Price said at a State Department briefing.
'We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution,' he said.
'We also view plans for the retroactive legalization of illegal outposts as unacceptable.
The housing and construction ministry under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a right-winger close to the settlement movement who leads a coalition with centrists, announced then tenders for 1,355 homes in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.
Authorities are also expected to discuss proposals for an additional 3,000 homes on land Palestinians have claimed for their future state, Reuters reported.
US-facilitated negotiations between Israel and Palestinian authorities fell apart in 2014.
In December, an Ocasio-Cortez staffer, legislative assistant Hussain Altamimi, came under fire for calling Israel a 'racist European ethnostate built on stolen land' in an Instagram story.
In September, the congresswoman dramatically burst into tears as she changed her vote from 'no' to 'present' to provide $1 billion in U.S. funding to replenish the Iron Dome.
She clarified that her vote did not mean she didn't approve funding for the Dome, but that 'opposing it would not defund U.S. financing of the system in any way, shape, or form.'
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'I believe strongly that Congress should take greater scrutiny with all military funding across the world. I also believe that, for far too long, the U.S. has handed unconditional aid to the Israeli government while doing nothing to address or raise the persistent human rights abuses against the Palestinian people, and that this imbalance of power must be centered in any honest conversation about Israel and Palestine - in addition to the many other government we militarily fund with a pattern of human rights abuses...' she wrote.
She later apologized to her constituents for changing her vote.
'To those I have disappointed — I am deeply sorry,' she wrote to residents of New York's 14th Congressional District, which includes parts of the Bronx and Queens. 'To those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice — I understand.'
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