Socialist Democratic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Women’s March co-leader Linda Sarsour were featured speakers at the 16th Annual Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA) held on July 29, 2018.
Ocasio-Cortez and Sarsour claim they are progressive women and a champion of women’s rights, but the UMAA is anything but progressive:
Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t hide her hatred towards Israel, but fumbled answers on the subject and admitted that she’s “not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.” From The Times of Israel:
“The lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer – if 60 people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if 60 people were killed in the South Bronx, unarmed, if 60 people were killed in Puerto Rico – I just look at that [Gaza] incident more through just, as an incident, and to me, it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores,” she said.“Of course the dynamics there, in terms of geopolitics … is very different than people expressing their First Amendment right to protest,” Hoover replied.
She called the killing of Palestinians at the Gaza fence a massacre. Terrorist group Hamas encouraged people to breach this fence and members of the group died at the the fence. Hoover brought this up:
“Yes,” Ocasio-Cortez conceded, adding, “But I also think that what people are starting to see at least in the occupation … of Palestine [is] just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.”When Hoover, a former aide to President George W. Bush, asked Ocasio-Cortez to clarify what she meant, Ocasio-Cortez paused and answered: “I think what I meant is like the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas in places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes.”
In another interview, she “drew parallels between Gaza and civil rights protests in America, a rhetorical turn that American Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League have criticized.”
There’s a lot of evidence of Sarsour’s hatred of Israel, but her appearance at an event in Chicago 2017 sticks out the most for me. That’s where Sarsour embraced terrorist Rasmea Odeh, the woman received a “prison term for a 1969 supermarket bombing in Jerusalem that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner,” and convicted “for the attempted bombing of the British Consulate that same year.”
I cannot find anything if Sarsour supported Ocasio-Cortez in her primary against incumbent Joe Crowley, but she gushed about the socialist after her victory.
Sarsour expressed disgust over the satire video from CRTV.
She also spoke to Democracy Now! about Ocasio-Cortez:
AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to talk about the travel ban, but Linda Sarsour is with us, director of the first Muslim online organizing platform, MPower Change. You supported Alexandria. This is a remarkable moment.
LINDA SARSOUR: I mean, in light of such horrible news yesterday with the travel ban and the Muslim ban, Alexandria is the hope that we’ve been waiting for. She is a young woman of color. She’s Puerto Rican. She’s a Socialist, just like me. We are both card-carrying DSA members. And she’s pro-Palestine, and she’s unapologetic. And the movement right now is elated, because this is what you’re going to see, Amy, in this election season. It’s a new day, a new generation. And Alexandria is what represents us and our values.