Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., published a post on X on Tuesday condemning the House’s recent passage of a defense spending bill that included a new round of military aid to Israel. “The genocide of the people of Gaza continues as members of Congress vote to fund Israel’s defensive and offensive military capabilities. This is immoral and no amount of excuses will ever make it ok,” she wrote.
At first glance, the post might appear to be a standard criticism of bipartisan support for the steady flow of U.S. aid to Israel from a left-wing member of Congress. But one word signals it’s more than just that — Omar’s mention of “defensive” capabilities also serves as a pointed critique of one of her closest colleagues and ideological allies in the House: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Omar is on stronger ground.
The two members of the “squad” of progressive lawmakers are among the most vocal critics of Israel on the Hill. But they’ve diverged recently on the issue of whether the U.S. should fund Israel’s missile defense systems, including Iron Dome, which uses missiles to intercept incoming rockets and other short-range aerial threats to Israel.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., proposed an amendment to the defense spending bill designed to cut $500 million for Israel’s missile defense. (She also proposed several other amendments on foreign aid designed to, among other things, cut off aid to Ukraine and disaster relief for foreign countries.) Greene’s Israel amendment only received votes from the libertarian-leaning Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and a handful of progressive lawmakers: Omar, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, and Al Green of Texas.
Ocasio-Cortez voted against the amendment. (She also voted against the defense spending bill that it was proposed to be added to, in line with most Democrats.) She posted on X that she voted against the amendment because “it does nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza.” She also said: “I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end” and that she remains focused on “cutting the flow of US munitions that are being used to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza.”
To summarize: Ocasio-Cortez supports aiding Israel’s defensive capabilities, but not its offensive capabilities. Omar opposes both. But Omar is on stronger ground.
Omar’s position is in line with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel, much of which is modeled off of international efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. It holds that the U.S. needs to end all aid to Israel — and sanction it — in order to pressure it to drop apartheid policies and end its horrifying military campaign in Gaza, which is currently weaponizing mass starvation and frequently shooting people seeking what little food is available. Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since the country was founded and receives billions of dollars a year from the U.S. in military aid. Keeping some support flowing to Israel would not be a strong rebuke to the country.
Ocasio-Cortez’s counter is that the Iron Dome helps keep the total number of deaths in the Israel-Hamas conflict down by protecting innocent Israelis. But the notion that more Israeli lives will be saved by continuing to provide it with unlimited packages of aid for defensive military capabilities, with virtually no strings attached, gets the story backward. Further fortifying Israel would still embolden the country to carry on with the belligerent behavior that’s putting its citizens in danger.
That's because funding Israel's defensive capabilities still helps keep its high-octane war machine running. Israel is a nuclear-armed regional hegemon with an OECD economy that is relentlessly striking out at its adversaries and causing massive civilian deaths in the region. It has decimated Hamas through a horrifying military operation which human rights experts and genocide scholars have deemed genocidal. Recently Israel has bombed and killed civilians in Lebanon. It has bombed and killed civilians in Iran. It has bombed and killed civilians in Syria. Giving Israel unlimited defensive support is not a neutral position. It is an intervention, one which would still help enable the most powerful country in the Middle East to carry out war crimes in the region with more confidence and less concern about the inevitable blowback for its conduct.
Ocasio-Cortez’s position on the Iron Dome now is to the right of her position four years ago. In 2021 she voted “present” on the matter and wept on the House floor, in what I characterized as a sign that she was “leaning more toward the insider track” in American politics because it signaled she was afraid to take a clear position on the matter as she ascended within the party. Now her opposition to Greene’s amendment — after her mealy mouthed speech on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the Democratic National Convention in 2024 — only confirms that reading of her behavior.
It is a shocking statement about America that only a tiny handful of lawmakers are willing to take a realistic position on ending the U.S.-backed genocide. Omar and her colleagues might look "extreme" by the standards of Congress, but it is in fact the rest of the government that’s in the extreme by the most basic standards of morality.
