Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office in the Bronx was vandalized early on Monday by masked protesters claiming to support Palestinian rights. They defaced her image by splattering red paint across the windows and left behind a sign reading “AOC funds genocide in Gaza.” The New York Democrat has also received violent threats in recent days, according to her senior adviser Oliver Hidalgo-Wohlleben.
For a crowd that’s supposedly fighting for Palestinian freedom, they sure have a knack for attacking exactly the wrong people.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, these activists bizarrely fixated on Vice President Kamala Harris—hardly the puppet master of U.S. foreign policy on Gaza—and heckled her relentlessly, even at her own party’s convention. They even cheered when Donald Trump won the election, with peak absurdity displayed in this viral celebratory tweet:
Now it’s 2025, and they’ve left Vice President JD Vance alone. I guess vice presidents have no power over Gaza, after all?
And after dubbing former President Joe Biden “Genocide Joe,” they seem to have misplaced their creativity when it comes to Trump, who now has the power to reshape U.S. policy. Instead, he has openly embraced the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Among other things, Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, defunded UNRWA, and greenlit Israel’s annexation plans. And who could forget the video he posted of his Gaza fantasy—replete with a golden Trump idol at his Trump-branded Gaza casino?
Yet none of these pro-Palestine activists protest Trump. No chants, no stupid nicknames, no disruption. Nothing.
Instead, they obsessively focus on Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC—the true villain, apparently, of the push for peace in the Middle East.
Disowned by the Democratic Socialists of America and hounded by a segment of the far left that ignores real enemies in favor of cannibalizing allies, AOC’s latest crime was voting “no” on an amendment pushed by far-right wack job Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to defund Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. AOC’s response was direct and principled.
Only six House members supported that amendment: Republicans Greene and Thomas Massie, who opposes all government spending; and Democrats Al Green, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.
It’s a bizarre coalition, to put it mildly.
The far right is isolationist and opposes all foreign funding, no matter the context. The far left, meanwhile, insists there’s no distinction between offensive and defensive weapons—arguing that by shielding Israeli civilians from rocket attacks, Iron Dome enables further aggression. But there is a difference, and it matters. Because any deliberate attack on civilians—whether Israeli or Palestinian—is terrorism, period. Civilians should never be targets. And yes, that applies to Israel as well, which has shown it can eliminate threats surgically when it chooses to, as Hezbollah painfully learned.
But this isn’t about untangling the endless knot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which none of us can do (no matter how much yelling is done in the comments attached to this story). It’s about where pro-Palestinian activists choose to aim their fire.
And right now, they’re ignoring the people gleefully fueling this war—Trump and his minions—and attacking people like AOC, who have neither the power nor the posture to support genocide, and who actually agree with them on the end goal!
Why not go after the dozens of other Democrats who voted the same way AOC did—i.e., against Greene’s stunt amendment? Why not target Republicans who support Israeli occupation without conditions? Why team up with literal white supremacists like Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Thankfully, AOC didn’t mince words.
“If you believe neo-nazis are welcome and operating in good faith, you can have them!” she tweeted—and she couldn’t be more right.