With time waning before the November election, politicians are being judicious in the use of their time.
It says something about the worldview and priorities of Squad darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) that she spent Tuesday evening headlining a get-out-the-vote event with the obscure political commentator Hasan Piker, best known for his remark that "America deserved 9/11."
At one point, Ocasio-Cortez had other plans for Tuesday evening, but, under pressure from left-wing activists, the socialist bartender-cum-lawmaker pulled out of an event honoring the legacy of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The Rabin event, hosted by the decidedly left-wing Americans for Peace Now, was no Zionist affair. It was attended by teachers' union president Randi Weingarten and Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who honored Rabin's legacy as a peacemaker. This was an event for those who loathe what the Zionist project has become—confident, capitalist, and prosperous—but nonetheless wish to associate themselves with the kind of progressive Zionism that Rabin has come to represent.
But even progressive Zionism, the support for the hypothetical Jewish state that might exist if its proponents could isolate and boycott and berate Israelis into living with unacceptable threats, is intolerable to AOC and her allies. As Jewish Insider reported earlier this month, the congresswoman has shunned New York's progressive Jewish leaders, some of whom have spent two years trying to get on her calendar. Those leaders are "perplexed" and "befuddled," the report says.
Tuesday evening's antics should bring some clarity. In addition to Piker, AOC was joined by her colleague Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who has argued that American support for Israel is solely a product of Jewish money—shared values and enemies don't factor for a congresswoman who rejects those values and embraces those enemies—and that it constitutes "allegiance to a foreign country." She believes that "Israel has hypnotized the world."
For Omar, 9/11 was an attack perpetrated by "some people" who "did something." For Piker, it was the attack America deserved.
AOC, who never seems to be at a loss for words, has had precious little to say about the atrocity inflicted on America that day but has never failed to defend her allies, like Omar, when they provoke criticism and backlash.
Her actions suggest that she believes the United States had it coming, that U.S. support for Israel is driven only by Jews and the support they can buy, and that Yitzhak Rabin was an irredeemable colonizer and occupier. As the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are: believe them.