AOC and the red line on Israel
What is the minimum stance socialists should expect from candidates who want our support?
Tuesday evening, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pledged at a virtual candidate forum with DSA that she would not vote for “any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called defensive capabilities.” Whatever one thinks about how adequate this is, it represents an objective step forward from her previous stated position that defunding the Iron Dome would amount to “adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war”. And that she made this pledge at a forum where DSA was deciding whether or not to endorse her is a clear vindication of the argument that socialists can use their endorsement as leverage to extract important commitments from candidates.
Less than a day later, however, AOC made a second statement: on Twitter, she insisted that the “Iron Dome system…has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe” but that “allies who need our military aid must understand that we will provide it consistent with the Leahy amendment and the foreign assistance act.” Some socialists have insisted that this is consistent with her earlier pledge since the Leahy amendment and the FAA effectively ban any military support to countries that violate human rights. Critics, however, have responded with a wide range of objections: AOC’s pledge was categorical, not conditioned on legalistic adherence to international law; AOC is still affirming the dangerous premise that military aid can be cleanly bracketed as “defensive” rather than “offensive”; and so on.
All of this, predictably, has created a meta-debate among socialists about our relationship (ugh) with AOC. Partisans of AOC have generally held that her statements are good enough and that critics are constantly ratcheting up their expectations so that they can never be met. Critics, meanwhile, are insisting that every time AOC makes some statement that would seem to pacify the left, she quickly follows it up with a statement that are at odds with left politics on Israel.
