Democrat Who Upset NY Incumbent Called Violence At Gaza Border A ‘Massacre’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New York’s 14th District, which comprises parts of Queens and the Bronx, is overwhelmingly Democrat.
She tweeted on May 14, the day more than 60 Palestinian protesters participating in the “March of Return” were killed on the border with Gaza: “This is a massacre. I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such. No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore.”
This is a massacre.
I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such.
No state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters. There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else.
Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore. https://t.co/wJGATOtDsR
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) May 14, 2018
She later said in an interview that her Puerto Rican roots helped her relate to the Palestinian protesters.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
