AOC excuses Palestinian violence against Israel: 'Marginalized' groups 'have no choice but to riot'

In an interview on a popular New York radio program earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., excused Palestinian violence against Israel, arguing that marginalized groups "have no choice but to riot."

Ocasio-Cortez, speaking on Ebro in the Morning, explained her opposition to Israeli policies toward Palestinians, suggesting that Palestinian violence is a response to the conditions created by those policies.

"Once you have a group that is marginalized ... once someone doesn't have access to clean water, they have no choice but to riot," Ocasio-Cortez said. She expanded on this point, saying poor communities in the United States or Latin America likewise have no choice but to act out violently because of their circumstances.

"I'm not even talking about Palestinians," she said. "I'm talking about communities in poverty in the United States, I'm talking about Latin America, I'm talking about all over the world."

"Social destabilization is what happens when people do not have a plan or feel like there's no vision for their future," she added.

Encouraged by the radio hosts, Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against accusations from conservatives that anti-Israel Democrats are anti-Semitic.

"The right wants to advance this notion that if you engage in critique of Israeli policy, then you are anti-Semitic," she said.

"The same way that me criticizing Trump doesn't make me anti-American, criticizing the occupation doesn't make you anti-Israel," she continued. "It doesn't mean that you are against the existence of a nation. It means that you believe in human rights and it's about making sure that Palestinian human rights are equal to Israeli human rights."

First, Ocasio-Cortez is drawing a moral equivalency between Palestinian terrorists who instigate riots and fire mortars at Jewish kindergartens and Israeli Jews who are victims of that violence. There is no moral equivalency. As Israeli PM Netanyahu has said time and time again, if the Palestinians wanted peace with Israel, they could have it, and the condition for having it is accepting Israel's existence. They don't want peace because they hate Jews and will not accept the existence of a Jewish state. The enmity between Palestine and Israel isn't about equal human rights; it's about one group violently rejecting the other's right to exist.

Second, Ocasio-Cortez has subscribed to a myth about Israel occupying Palestinian territory. That's a lie. Under international law, Israel has the unambiguous right to the land AOC, echoing Palestinian propaganda, claims the Jewish state is occupying. The truth is there has never been a sovereign state of "Palestine," there is no such state today, and because Israel has a legal claim to Judea, Samaria, and Eastern Jerusalem, there is no "occupation."

Thirdly, the Palestinians engaging in violent acts against Israel are not doing so out of desperation or because of their circumstances. From a young age, Palestinian children are indoctrinated to hate Israelis. They are taught a false Arab-supremacist history that denies the Jewish people's historic connection to their homeland. Their government subsidizes the families of convicted terrorists who commit acts of violence against Israelis. The Palestinians can choose peace, but they are taught to choose violence -- and rewarded for it.

Excusing Palestinian violence under a blanket ideological belief that "marginalized" groups "have no choice but to riot" is appallingly ignorant, and yes it is anti-Semitic. It is anti-Semitic because support for Palestinian claims about Israel are based on lies about Jewish history taught by an institutionalized system of hateful indoctrination that encourages and supports terrorism against the Jewish people and denies the world's only Jewish state its right to exist.

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