Anti-Israel activists protest AOC, Bowman primary rally

Anti-Israel activists protested a Democratic Party primary rally for New York City US House representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman on Saturday.

The event, which featured guests such as Senator Bernie Sanders, was, according to the event website aimed at rousing supporters for canvasing before the Tuesday primaries, but the “squad” members faced opposition from within the progressive coalition.

Within Our Lifetime demonstrated outside the event demanding that the New York politicians reverse their endorsement of US President Joe Biden in his incumbent race for the White House in November, and to reverse their denunciation of the anti-Israel group’s June 10 protest of the Nova Music Festival Massacre exhibit.

Accusations of genocide

The activists accused Biden of supporting a supposed genocide in Gaza, and that Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman, and Sanders had tied themselves to that alleged crime. According to footage published by WOL on Twitter, activists chanted “Over 40,000 dead, AOC your hands are red!”

While both Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez have been strong critics of the State of Israel and have framed their primary challenges as a fight against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a WOL statement of demands said, “To claim to support our struggle while aligning you yourself with Genocide Joe is an irreconcilable contradiction and we are here to pressure these election representatives to abandon him.”

As recompense for condemning the June 10 protest, WOL demanded that the progressive politicians reaffirm that “antizionism is not antisemitism.”

Ocasio-Cortez had on June 11 taken to social media to condemn the protest, which saw the waving of Hamas and Hezbollah flags and a speech denigrating those massacred, as “callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews.” Bowman also condemned the protest as “antisemitic and unacceptable.”

The activists denied their protest was antisemitic, contending that it was instead an “anti-colonial liberation struggle.” WOL stood by the June 10 speech by its leader Nerdeen Kiswani and a June 12 statement, arguing that the exhibit on the massacre of civilians in southern Israel was “a propaganda project manufacturing consent for our people’s genocide.”

For its third demand, WOL called on the politicians to “recognize the right for an oppressed people to resist annihilation and engage in armed struggle as enshrined in international law.”

Protesters at the event held up a banner that proclaimed “resistance until return.”

WOL concluded, “We will continue to protest politicians, whether they claim to be allies of our cause or not, if they do not meet the bare minimum for solidarity in a moment where our people in Palestine are bearing witness to a genocide sponsored and funded by the United States.”

Congressman Ritchie Torres said on social media on Friday that WOL was a dangerous organization, noting the counter-protest promotional graphic which called to “flood the Bronx for Gaza.”

“The notion of ‘flooding the Bronx for Gaza’ is meant as a twisted show of solidarity with Hamas, which describes the terror of October 7 as ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,’” noted Torres.