During a Democratic Socialists event in Austin, Texas last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) accused Israel of putting Arab children in cages in Judea and Samaria:

“I don’t believe that a child should be in a cage on our border, and I don’t believe a child should be in a cage in the West Bank,” AOC said in a videotaped remark.

AOC was essentially speaking to her voter base as she and Rashida Tlaib are the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to serve in Congress. The political organization advocates for anti-Semitic Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS).

During her speeches in Austin, Ocasio-Cortez also said, “With media, with all this stuff, Palestine is a banned word. It’s censored. We don’t talk about it. No one knows about it.

“I want to be unequivocal; we are here to stand up for the rights of Palestinians and Palestinian children—one hundred percent. Don’t get it twisted because disinformation is not the vibe.

“Believing in the basic human dignity and the ability for a person to not be jailed or beaten for who they are, it does not mean that you are bigoted against any other community,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And we gotta call that for what it is.”

Her comments drew criticism from Jewish groups. “@AOC, you know as well as we do that there are no Palestinian children ‘in cages’ in the West Bank,” the American Jewish Committee tweeted. “This kind of gross misinformation hurts chances for reasonable discussion and furthers harmful biases. You must apologize for these baseless allegations.”

“@RepAOC demonizing Jews at a time of raging #Antisemitism in NYC,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center similarly tweeted. “Throwing children into cages is [inhumane] and cruel. Prove it or apologize. You are legitimizing hatred against Jewish people everywhere.”

“This should go without saying, but Israel does not have children in cages in the West Bank, @AOC,” Israel War Room tweeted. “This vicious libel mirrors the libels that have plagued Jewish civilization for centuries.”

United With Israel similarly tweeted: “Dear @AOC, I also don’t believe that children should be in cages. Please reply with one example of a Palestinian child being held in a cage by the State of Israel. Ever.  Looking forward to hearing from you, Israel.”

This is far from the first time AOC has made false and defamatory allegations against Israel. In May 2018, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Israel Defense Forces’ use of deadly force against Palestinians participating in the 2018 Gaza border protests, calling it a “massacre” in a tweet. In a July 2018 interview with the PBS series Firing Line, she said she is “a proponent of a two-state solution” and called Israel’s presence in the “West Bank” an “occupation of Palestine.” In June 2020, she said that  Israel’s planned annexation of Judea and Samaria “would lay the groundwork for Israel becoming an apartheid state.” In May 20121, when Hamas fired over 4,600 rockets at Israeli cities from Gaza, she criticized President Biden for saying Israel “has a right to defend itself.” In September 2021, she blocked  $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system due to Israel’s “persistent human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.”

Ironically,  at a December 2018 Hanukkah celebration in New York, she climbed to have some Sephardic Jewish ancestry in what many Jews considered a blatant attempt at cultural appropriation.