Sunday, during an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) lashed out at her colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives for what she called “ignoring and sidelining” of Palestinians.
She accused the Israeli government of “collective punishment” and suggested that the response to war crimes committed by Hamas was war crimes.
“[H]amas is absolutely engaged in horrific attacks, and every single day there are more details that are released about what occurred on October 7 that shocks the human consciousness and shocks our conscience, our collective conscience,” she said. “However, we do know, as well, that war crimes do not constitute and are not an appropriate response for other war crimes.”
She called the response from Congress “quite shocking.”
“I mean, I will say that I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians in U.S. House of Representatives, the humanity of Palestinian populations in the five years that I’ve been in Congress, quite shocking. This is not something that is new to many of us. I have engaged alongside many of my colleagues, from Betty McCollum’s bill on the detention, you know, conditioning aid and making sure that it’s not going to the detention of children, to just raising the routine human rights issues.”
“We’ve been trying to raise the alarm bells around this for years, and there has been virtually no acknowledgment in the United States House of Representatives about the extreme plight and continued human rights violations of the Palestinian people for years.”
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