Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez votes PRESENT on Iron Dome funding, pretends to be the victim
The House recently approved an additional $1 billion to Israel's Iron Dome defense system by a margin of 420-9, with two representatives, including AOC, voting present.
Israel is murdering Palestinian civilians. That is a blatant fact. Just a day ago they killed 5 Palestinians in an armed battle after the Israeli’s attempted an overnight military raid on that village and surrounding ones.
Of course, earlier this year, there was a massive conflict between a group of Palestinians and the Israeli government, funded by the most powerful country in the history of the world. That ended in 256 Palestinian deaths, including 66 children, and 13 Israeli fatalities.
That is not an even battle, suggested by the nearly 20:1 death ratio during the battle, not to mention the fact that the Israeli’s have carried out mass evictions of Palestinians, taking innocent, good people out of their own homes.
One of the things that they do is that they claim that all Palestinians are aligned with Hamas, and that Hamas want to destroy Israel.
Now, most of that is not true. Many Palestinians do not support Hamas, and Hamas have not wanted to end Israel since the 1980s. What they now support is a two state solution along the 1967 borders, which is a very fair and reasonable wish. But the Israeli’s seemingly want to destroy Palestinians, so they don’t accept this offer.
The United States is deeply involved in this crisis. Since 1985, they have given a yearly grant of nearly $3 billion to the Israeli’s to improve their ‘defensive’ (more like offensive) military options. In both 2019 and 2020, the American government has increased that dollar amount to $3.8 billion, meaning that they are directly culpable for the crimes committed by the Israeli government against Palestinians.
This funding amount was massively increased this week when Congress passed a massive bill to give the Israeli government an extra $1 billion to fund their iron dome, protecting them against any incoming weaponry.
Now, the correct thing to do here is to vote no, for a few reasons.
The first of these are the war crimes that the Israeli’s have committed against Palestinians. They simply are not acceptable. No country that commits the heinous acts that the Israeli government have, acts including discriminating against Palestinians by evicting them from their own houses, shooting them with rubber bullets at peaceful protests and then going as far as blowing up hospitals during periods of increased tensions, should be able to receive a cool billion dollars from the biggest military in the world to defend themselves.
Another reason is that this is a billion dollars that could be going to a multitude of things that actually make American’s lives easier. Given that it would cost $20 billion to end homelessness, and there are about 552,830 homeless people nationwide, that $1 billion could end homelessness for nearly 30,000 people. That is a lot of people. The annual $3.8 billion dollars given to Israel could get over 105,000 people a home, according to these numbers, a number that would include every single homeless veteran. That’s way more worth it that giving money to a genocidal regime.
This is a matter of principle for me. Similar to Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, I hold a principled stance against foreign aid when we have hundreds of thousands of homeless people and millions without access to health insurance. That doesn’t mean that I support efforts to make improving the quality of life in these countries more difficult, which is what war and sanctions inevitably do, but it does mean that I cannot supporting focusing money on the wellbeing of other countries above that of working class Americans.
However, none of that is the reason why I’m covering this, given that it isn’t really even remotely surprising. The United States has been funding the Apartheid state that is Israel while they commit war crimes for decades now. There is nothing new here. The reason I’m covering this is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, supposedly the poster child for progressivism voted ‘present’ on this bill.
Now, her vote didn’t really matter. The final result of the vote was 420-9, meaning her non-vote is pretty irrelevant in the result
However, it is a picture of how the squad and the Justice Democrats refuse to actually fight, or even vote, for the things that they know are right.
AOC knows that Israel should not be receiving military aid. She was initially planning to vote ‘no’ on this Iron Dome funding, but then decided against doing this.
She was seen having an animated conversation on the House floor with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a massively pro-Israel politicians who has given speeches to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and was endorsed by pro-Israel PAC J Street, just before the vote took place. There is almost no doubt in my mind that Pelosi was telling Cortez to vote Present, a request that the New Yorker carried out.
In response to the uproar from her progressive base, the people who got her elected, she released a rambling, slightly pathetic 4 page piece on why she voted present, although she never actually explained why she did vote that way.
She spent a great deal of time explaining why this bill is bad, and she is right. Not a word she said about the bill itself is wrong. She spelt out the case for voting no, but then she didn’t do it.
At no point in this statement does she paint a picture for us why she refused to vote no, nor does she have a go at any of the 420 members who did support the bill.
This leaves me believing that the only reason that she refused to vote against this bill is because of something Nancy Pelosi said to her. I don’t know what, I don’t know if any career threats were made, I cannot give any evidence. But the fact that AOC wanted to vote no, before having an animated conversation with Pelosi changed her mind, and then the 31-year-old voted ‘present’ before breaking down into tears says to me that some kind of big threat was made against her future career threats if she voted no by her “mama bear.” There is simply no other explanation.
There is also a deeper hypocrisy here.
When Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat who I supported on some level during the 2020 Presidential campaign who has since become practically a Republican, voted ‘present’ on President Trump’s first impeachment, Ocasio-Cortez came out and said “Whenever we have a vote, we should vote ‘yes’ and we should vote ‘no.' Voting present is a very tough position to be in. To not take a stand in a moment that is so consequential, I think it’s quite difficult.”
This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that it is wrong to vote ‘present’ in practically any circumstance, and yet she did on this one. Hypocrisy at its finest.
On the impeachment issue, I also would have voted ‘present,’ because, while Trump definitely did something wrong, the parts that the Democrats decided to attempt to impeach over simply were not worthy of such a punishment.
I have no problem with voting present in principle. However, on the issue of yet more funding for Israel, there is no acceptable reason not to vote ‘no’. There is not one. AOC didn’t even give a single explanation in her long statement as to why she refused to do this, so she deserves criticism.
Her vote was not very consequential, to be completely honest. But the fact that Nancy Pelosi can twist her arm is particularly newsworthy, as is her pathetic statement and her hypocrisy over the principality of voting present.