That AOC Can Become a Zionist

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to ally with an antisemite. We should pay attention.

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

I was living in New York when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her primary in 2018. I remember the energy of it: the branding, the story — a bartender from the South Bronx beating a ten-term incumbent. We’re the same age. Something about it landed even across the political distance, even knowing our views on some key issues likely diverged.

At the time, I was doing Israel policy work in the city. During her first term in Congress, the organization I was with engaged with Ocasio-Cortez’s team. They didn’t necessarily agree with our positions, but they were willing to meet, to listen, to have a conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In today’s environment, that kind of openness would actually be a big deal.

The 2018 Firing Line interview with Margaret Hoover told the same story. The future congresswoman stumbled badly when pressed on what she meant when she’d referred to “the occupation of Palestine” — which could either refer to the territories seized in 1967, or a more radical, expansive definition that includes all of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

“I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue,” AOC conceded. “Middle Eastern politics is not exactly at my kitchen table every night. I may not use the right words.”

That admission revealed two things: AOC professed some refreshing honesty for a politician, and her views on the Middle East were guided by intuition, not lifelong ideological commitments. She’d run for office on affordability and other domestic issues, not the promise of breaking the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. AOC had simply absorbed the language of her political environment without thinking it through.

As time wore on, now-Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez did develop firmer views on Israel. On the Hill, she became one of the founding members of the Squad, an informal grouping of progressive representatives, some of whom do have deep anti-Zionist convictions. As with so many people, her positions hardened in the aftermath of October 7 and the Gaza War — the arms embargo votes, Munich in February, where she said US aid had “enabled a genocide in Gaza.” I disagree with her on almost every position she has taken on this conflict. The genocide accusations are wrong, and I’ve said so. I’ve watched her move further in a direction I find damaging and dishonest.

Much of the pro-Israel establishment treats them as equivalent. A recent AIPAC ad attacking a Republican congressman declared: “On Israel, Massie votes with AOC and Ilhan Omar again and again” — using them as interchangeable examples of the anti-Israel position, without distinguishing between a policy critic and someone with a documented antisemitism problem. That conflation is the failure I want to name.

None of what follows is a defense of her positions. I disagree with nearly all of them when it comes to Israel. What follows is a call to show why it matters.

Last week at the University of Chicago, AOC was asked about aligning with former Republican Congresswoman and notorious conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene on Israel policy. Greene was one of the only Republican politicians to parrot spurious genocide claims — which raised more eyebrows than the typical accusation given her history of outlandish claims about Jewish power. Despite their seeming alignment on Israel, AOC declined to embrace her. Greene, Ocasio-Cortez said, is “a proven bigot and antisemite.” Allying with white nationalists doesn’t serve the movement. Her own flank erupted.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the University of Chicago, May 9, 2026. (Credit: CSPAN2)

Peter Daou declared Greene has “far more intellectual honesty and far more courage on the defining moral issue of our time” than AOC. Ryan Grim, founder of the Hamas-sympathetic Drop Site News, said Greene had “sacrificed her political career to stand against genocide.” Susan Abdulhawa said Greene has “more credibility and honor” than AOC on this matter.

The refusal wasn’t just principled. AOC understands she needs broader appeal if she wants a national profile. When principle and political ambition point in the same direction, you have someone genuinely reachable — and a movement that’s furious at her for it.

This isn’t a new pattern. Hasan Piker — who has called Hamas “a thousand times better” than Israel — has hosted prominent Democrats on his show without consequence. Nobody paid a price for it. In fact, Ezra Klein even wrote a piece telling Democrats to welcome him to the mainstream. AOC declines to ally with a white nationalist and her own flank turns on her.

AOC has a floor. She will oppose Israeli government policy in terms I find deeply wrong. But she will not welcome antisemites into her tent. Daou, Grim, and Abdulhawa have no such floor. They completed the convergence — antizionist left meets antisemitic right — and they’re furious at AOC for not following them there.

That floor is what separates her from Ilhan Omar, who has a documented pattern — the dual loyalty allegations, the “Benjamins” tweet, comparing the US and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban — that reflects something more settled than political positioning. They are not the same, and treating them as if they are is the specific failure I want to name.

When we bundle AOC with Omar, we remove every incentive AOC has to maintain the distinction. She gets the antizionist label regardless of where she stands. We tell the Democratic mainstream that the pro-Israel side cannot tell the difference between a policy critic and someone with a documented antisemitism problem. And we hand the eliminationist fringe a gift: suddenly their position is where three-quarters of Senate Democrats stand — three-quarters who recently voted to block arms sales to Israel.

AOC is widely seen as a likely Senate or presidential contender — a recent AtlasIntel poll has her leading the 2028 Democratic primary field at 26%. Where she ends up on this question is not a matter of this news cycle. It is a question about what the Democratic Party’s relationship with Israel looks like in 2028 and beyond. People with floors are reachable in ways people without them are not. A different Israeli government, pursuing different policies, has something to work with in AOC that it has nothing to work with in Mamdani, who declared Israel guilty of genocide thirteen days after October 7, before Israel had finished counting its own dead.

I’ve heard the argument many times — in policy circles, in Jewish communal spaces, from people who track these things closely. AOC becomes the Democratic nominee. AOC becomes president. What does that mean for Israel? It’s a real question and I’ve sat with it. But the MTG moment last week shifted something for me. A politician who won’t ally with antisemites even under pressure from her own movement, even at real political cost, is not the threat that argument assumes. She’s something more complicated and more interesting — and more reachable than the argument gives her credit for.

An Israel that declares a political horizon with Palestinians, that moves to curb settler violence rather than enable it, that has actual liberal Zionists in government alongside the pragmatic right — that Israel gives AOC’s floor somewhere to stand. She becomes a potential ally rather than an opponent. Not because she changed. Because the things she was responding to changed.

That’s what “can become a Zionist” means. And it starts with recognizing that she and Ilhan Omar are not the same.