One could be forgiven for being more than a bit incredulous about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (AOC) latest policy shift on Israel. First made public in an X post on April Fool’s Day, the sudden announcement that she would no longer support any military aid to Israel came as a surprise to many. But the timing was intentional: Just the previous day, AOC had been grilled about her position on Israel by members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who are voting whether or not to endorse her 2026 congressional campaign.
During the online meeting where her endorsement was debated, AOC was criticized by many members for her previous votes on military funding to Israel and her support for so-called “defensive military aid” to the country. Like some other DSA Democrats, including Jamaal Bowman, AOC has explicitly supported Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, which the Zionist state uses to protect itself and its military assets from retaliation, even as it launches missile strikes on innocent civilians abroad. In fact, the system is an essential part of Israel’s overall military strategy, and portraying it as some kind of defensive humanitarian project is a dangerous fantasy that only a fool would believe.
But AOC is no fool. Her support for the Iron Dome and Israel was always part of a calculated political decision to protect and increase her influence and power within the Democratic Party. But after nearly two and half years of Israel’s ruthless genocide in Gaza, and a fierce and growing international movement against it, AOC has read the writing on the wall. Now that the Zionist regime is once again spearheading a war on Iran, it’s obvious that a huge portion of her base, including her most likely campaign volunteers, are done with Israel. And considering the DSA’s recently adopted anti-Zionist position, she is well aware that her previous views on Israel are now a liability. This time she may not only lose the endorsement of the National DSA, as she did in 2024, but may also lose the endorsement of the New York City chapter, which helped her win her first election in 2018 and stood by her in 2024.
Eager to maintain her image as a left populist as well as the patina of democratic socialism that comes with a DSA endorsement, AOC is changing her tune. After eight years of supporting Israel, she has now vowed to oppose all military funding to the country and promised to oppose any legislation that equates ant-Zionism with antisemitism. But her newfound political clarity on the state of Israel is too little too late. In fact, even a cursory reading of her public statement shows that she is — as the soviets used to say — trying to sit on two chairs with one ass. AOC wants to signal to the DSA that she is willing to vote against additional funding for the Iron Dome while still making it clear to her Democratic colleagues that she supports the defense of Israel and the Zionist and imperialist project the missile system helps to maintain.
As she says clearly in her statement:
The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment….Netanyahu’s allies in the Knesset just approved a $45 Billion defense budget, and the Prime Minister himself also asserted his interest in withdrawing from the MOU with the United States in January. It is fully within their ability to fund Iron Dome and other defensive systems.
In other words, even if she thinks it’s no longer necessary for the United States to fund it, AOC still supports the existence of the Iron Dome. This is, to say the least, a terrible position, akin to saying you oppose U.S. imperialism, but support its strategy of nuclear deterrence. The rockets that are falling on Israel now, and those that have been launched by the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, are a direct product of Israeli foreign policy, its aggression toward its many neighbors — including Lebanon and Iran — and its ongoing occupation and settlement of Gaza and the West Bank. Stop those attacks, the expansion of settlements, and the theft of Palestinian land and there would be no need for the Iron Dome.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In her statement and in the call where her endorsement was debated, AOC said nothing about U.S. imperialism or how the relationship between the United States and Israel fuels the U.S. and European imperialist projects in the region. It is a well-known fact, after all, that Israel has been a forward operating base for a decades-long project of imperial plunder of the Middle East.
To overlook or ignore these facts, or to pretend that the Zionist state of Israel is worth defending, is little more than a passive form of what Lenin called “social chauvinism.” Indeed, it is not enough to merely oppose military funding to Israel; any socialist worthy of the name must fundamentally be opposed to the existence of the Zionist regime and for the defeat of U.S. imperialism.
DSA and the Democrats
The real question, however, is this: how did a socialist organization, whose rank-and-file members endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in 2017, and who voted to identify as an anti-Zionist organization in 2025, wind up in such a situation to begin with? And why have they allowed their most public political figure to continue to support Israel for so long even as it carried out a genocide against the people of Gaza?
The answer has little to do with the DSA’s official positions on Israel and everything to do with its electoral strategy and its failure to break with the imperialist Democratic Party.
As members of both the DSA and the Democratic Party, politicians like AOC and Zohran Mamdani are part of the imperialist state they claim to oppose. Their political success and their re-election are dependent upon their ability to play nice and compromise. Indeed, in her short tenure, and as recently as this year, AOC has enthusiastically supported and endorsed several pro-Israel Democrats including former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Like Mamdani, who also endorsed the Zionist Hochul, AOC also actively opposed any primary challenge to the staunchly pro-Israel and anti-socialst Democratic Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, effectively guaranteeing his re-election and his possible role as Majority Leader if Democrats retake the House in 2026. In other words, they both actively took action to help a pro-Israel genocide apologist become one of the most powerful voices in their party.
Such opportunism shows that it is impossible to be anti-imperialist within an imperialist party, and why no amount of promises to the DSA will change that.
While many in the DSA argue such compromises are necessary for winning partial reforms, and part of the long process of gaining enough seats to eventually break with the party leadership entirely, such a pragmatic approach ignores the role of the working class and the importance of class independence. Agreeing to oppose further military funding to Israel and to officially reject the lie that anti-Zionism is antisemitic is no doubt a positive development, but such positions have the dual effect of providing left cover for a party that remains imperialist to the core. More pragmatically, they mean nothing if DSA electeds continue to endorse politicians who support Israel and who regularly equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Furthermore, such positions are entirely useless if they are merely legislative and not directly connected to a larger strategy to organize and build the independent power of the working class, which is the only way to put an end to the barbarous marriage of U.S. and Israeli interests.
From the brutally repressed, but defiant student occupations during the Biden administration to the mass strikes that rocked Italy and Spain in 2025, tens of millions of people across the world have organized to call attention to Israel’s crimes and bring an end to them. These mobilizations had a profound impact on the consciousness of the working masses who are rejecting U.S. imperialism and Zionism in greater and greater numbers and are directly responsible for AOC’s about face.
Meanwhile, just last month, more than eight million people took to the streets in the United States and Europe to reject Trump, his draconian immigration policies, and the U.S-Israeli War on Iran. All of this shows that the masses are eager for a real alternative to the bipartisan imperialist regime. Working within the Democrats only undermines the possibility of creating the kind of class independent political organizations capable of leading such struggles and building real working class power.
Ultimately, the most important question is not whether the DSA should endorse AOC, but whether it is finally willing to break with the Democrats.
The post Promises, Promises: AOC, Israel, and the DSA appeared first on Left Voice.
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