DSA Ditches AOC for Not Being Anti-Zionist Enough

Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Since she launched her insurgent primary campaign, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America has been one of the best-known aspects of her political biography.

Six years later, the DSA has ditched AOC.

In a statement published late on Wednesday, the DSA, the nation’s largest socialist political organization, wrote that it was revoking the endorsement it had issued shortly before the primary this year, which she won easily. The DSA first backed AOC in 2018 before she defeated Joseph Crowley and a Republican general-election candidate. The latest endorsement came with conditions, including total opposition to U.S. funding or Israel and opposition to “all criminalization of Anti-Zionism.” But in a June livestream hosted by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, AOC stated that some recent criticisms of Israel could be interpreted as antisemitic. The DSA wrote in a statement that her comments were a “deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide” and that antisemitism and anti-Zionism were “conflated” at the event. But Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t just the best-known ally of the DSA; she was also one of the staunchest supporters of Palestine in Congress, describing the Israeli attacks on Gaza as a “genocide” earlier this year.

The DSA has faced some turmoil since the war in Gaza began. On October 11, Representative Shri Thanedar renounced his membership from the group after it hosted a rally in New York at which a protester held up a swastika on his phone.