New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received multiple death threats and her head office was vandalized by anti-Israel supporters over the weekend.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx office was smeared in red paint Sunday and activists placed a placard on the building that read: “AOC FUNDS GENOCIDE IN GAZA,” her campaign office said.
“Last night, our campaign office in the Bronx was vandalized and we are in the process of cleaning it up,” said campaign manager Oliver Hidalgo-Wohlleben in a post on X. “In the past few days, we also have received multiple threats on the Congresswoman’s life and we are treating this seriously with our security partners to make sure she, our staff, and volunteers are safe.”
The New York Police Department said the incident was under investigation and no arrests have been made.
The vandalism came days after Ocasio-Cortez voted against an amendment put forward by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Friday that would have stripped $500 million in funding for Israel’s missile defense systems.
Ocasio-Cortez has been a consistent voice against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and criticized Greene’s amendment for doing “nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of U.S. munitions” in the war-torn region.
“What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
The Democratic Socialists of America condemned the congresswoman’s vote in a statement released Friday.
“The fact that Representative Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges that Israel is carrying out this genocide makes her support for military aid all the more disappointing and incongruous,” the group said. “We urge the representative to continue voting against the Iron Dome, whether it is part of a larger defense spending bill or as a stand-alone bill.”
Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid was among those who came to Ocasio-Cortez’s defense. “She has one of the strongest pro-Palestinian voting records in Congress. It’s fair to debate strategy and disagreement over specific choices–but vandalizing her office and saying @AOC “funds genocide” isn’t just wrong,” Shahid wrote in a post on X.
“It’s reckless, dishonest, misleading, and deeply unserious.”
