Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that accusations that President Biden is enabling genocide in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war demonstrate the “mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing.”
When asked by NBC anchor Kristen Welker whether accusing Biden of condoning genocide goes “too far,” Ocasio-Cortez said the accusations instead show that young people “are appalled” at the loss of life in Gaza. She pointed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which said in a preliminary ruling last week that Israel must contain civilian deaths in Gaza.
“I believe that they are they are — they’re still determining it. But in the interim ruling, the fact that they said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing,” Ocasio-Cortez said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
She also said recent polls show Americans are concerned with genocide in Gaza. A recent YouGov/The Economist poll found that half of Biden’s voters in 2020 believe the Israeli government is committing a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“And so whether you are an individual that believes this is a genocide, which by the way, in our polling, we are seeing large amounts of Americans concerned specifically with that word. So I don’t think that it is something to completely toss someone out of our public discourse for using,” she said.
“But I think what we are seeing here is that the Netanyahu government has lost public support and that we have a responsibility to protect the human rights and humanity of Gazans and hostages alike in the area,” she added.
ICJ President Joan Donoghue said in the ruling last week that Israel must take “measures in its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide” against the Palestinian people. According to The Associated Press, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported more than 26,000 have been killed in Gaza since the onset of the war.
The Hamas attacks on Israel last October left more than 1,200 people dead and resulted in more than 200 people being taken hostage by the militants. A weeklong cease-fire deal in November saw the release of about 100 Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity in exchange for about 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.