This is a guest post by Quizblorg
After her surprise win against the establishment candidate in New York’s Democratic primary has turned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the new shooting star of the Democratic Party, much emphasis has been put – both by supporters and opponents – on her association with another party, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of whose New York City chapter she is a member.
Most of this attention has focused on the DSA’s domestic policies. But it is the party’s increasingly strident anti-Zionism that seems particularly worrying. (It should be noted in passing that both this anti-Zionism and the party’s embrace of Communism are a far cry from the principles of of its founder, the great anti-Communist socialist Michael Harrington.)
At its national convention last year, the DSA committed itself to the BDS movement; apparently, the outcome of this vote was accompanied by chants of “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free!” among the delegates.
But that is not all. In May of this year, the very same NYC chapter of the party that Ocasio-Cortez belongs to tweeted a video of a Neturei Karta speech on “Zionist propaganda”, adding the hashtags “#BDS” and “#FreePalestine” to leave no doubts about their endorsement of the group as members of a common cause.
(Neturei Karta is, of course, an utterly fringe group that is only of interest to anti-Zionist extremists looking for a Jewish fig leaf, and has no qualms about providing this service to the nastiest antisemites, like the Iranian regime.)
Ocasio-Cortez’ membership in a party that promotes Neturei Karta throws up worrying questions about her own attitude towards Israel, and Jews in general, and whether her rise to prominence might be another sign (after the election of former Farrakhan associate Keith Ellison as DNC Deputy Chair) of an insipient Corbynization of the Democratic Party. Any journalists concerned about antisemitism would be well advised to press her on this issue.
