The left is turning on AOC over Israel — and imperiling its own agenda

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) listens during a markup meeting with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Capitol Hill, May 13. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Deputy Opinion Editor Nora Berman July 24, 2025

Since her entry into politics seven years ago, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been touted — or decried, depending on your politics — as a fiery, socialist darling of the left.

And yet, not for the first time, the left is turning on her over Israel.

Late last week, the Democratic New York congresswoman voted no on an amendment to a larger defense appropriations bill. That amendment would have stripped funding from the Israeli Cooperative Program, an initiative that provides Israel with $500 million annually toward missile defense. Other progressive Democrats often allied with Ocasio-Cortez, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, voted with the amendment’s sponsor, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Ocasio-Cortez explained in a statement on X that she voted against Greene’s amendment for several reasons. The amendment did not prevent offensive aid to Israel or U.S. munitions being used in Gaza, she wrote, and she did not believe in “adding to the death count of innocent victims” that would occur if Israel were stripped of its missile defense funding.

Leftists seized upon Ocasio-Cortez’s “no” vote as proof that she had left her democratic socialist values behind and was now supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. Her district office in the Bronx was vandalized with red paint, and the words “AOC funds genocide in Gaza.” (Ocasio-Cortez has never voted proactively to send any funds to Israel.) Her campaign manager and senior adviser posted on X that within the last few days, the congresswoman has received multiple death threats.

Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most popular members of Congress, isn’t the only progressive politician to face this kind of attack. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor; Sen. Bernie Sanders; and former New York Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, among others, have all faced intense condemnation from their own political base on the left over a perceived shift in their feelings about Israel. For progressive politicians in 2025, it doesn’t seem to matter what your policy positions actually are: Changing your mind on Israel, even in the tiniest ways, is a cardinal sin.

But Ocasio-Cortez’s situation is particularly striking, because she’s one of the most compelling progressive politicians on the national stage at a moment when the Democratic establishment is largely still reeling from President Donald Trump’s 2024 election upset. She’s the kind of figure a functional left might rally behind as someone who not only has a clear vision for the future of her party, but is also immensely skilled at articulating it.

A wildly intelligent communicator, Ocasio-Cortez burst onto the political scene in 2018 and upset a 10-term incumbent to win her district in New York City. As a freshman representative, she displayed an immediate talent for many parts of political life. But when it came to the Middle East, and specifically the nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she had a lot of catching up to do.

She admitted as much herself in a now-infamous 2018 interview on PBS when she was still a candidate. “I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue,” she told Firing Line host Margaret Hoover. “Middle Eastern politics is not exactly at my kitchen table every night.”

What she was clear about, even at that early stage, was that she was an advocate for Palestinian rights. And so she has remained. She was one of the earliest supporters of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, and has continued to forcefully speak out in favor of one. She has regularly pushed to stop weapons transfers and funding for Israel. She expressed support for a bill that Mamdani put forward as a state assemblyman in 2024 that would stop New York-based NGOs from financially supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Yet for all of Ocasio-Cortez’s strong advocacy for Palestinians — and the ire she has drawn from pro-Israel groups like AIPAC — leftist commentators began to sour on her Israel politics after she changed her vote on a 2021 bill authorizing more funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, a missile defense system, from “no” to “present.” Pro-Palestinian groups and other progressives vilified her for abandoning her principles; Ocasio-Cortez wrote a letter apologizing to her constituents for changing her vote, and said she had been subject to “hateful targeting” from pro-Israel activists.

Ocasio-Cortez clearly made that 2021 decision under immense pressure. But in the subsequent years, she has made deliberate efforts to engage with American Jewish groups and gain a deeper understanding of the nuanced views American Jews hold on Israel, particularly since Oct. 7. For these efforts, she has also been punished by her base.

A notable example was last summer, when she hosted a livestream titled “Antisemitism and the Fight for Democracy” along with Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and Stacy Burdett, the government and external relations director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The conversation was frank, with the Jewish leaders speaking about examples of antisemitism on the left. While Ocasio-Cortez alleged that antisemitism had in some ways become “weaponized” to silence criticism of Israel, she acknowledged that “antisemitism is a threat to Jews and to the progressive movement.”

A month after the discussion, the national Democratic Socialists of America committee withdrew its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez, despite her clear assertions on the stream that criticism of Zionism or Israel was not inherently antisemitic. They were disappointed by her participation, they wrote, in a livestream where “antisemitism and anti-Zionism were conflated and boycotting Zionist institutions was condemned.”

It’s possible this process is about to repeat with Mamdani, who has recently drawn condemnation from the left for moderating his speech on Israel after learning from Jewish leaders.

Days before the Democratic primary in June, Mamdani refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” while speaking on a podcast, explaining the term as one that is the correct translation of the Arabic word for “struggle” while failing to note that many Jews have a very different set of very negative associations with the word.

After winning the primary decisively in a surprise upset of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who tried to make the race a referendum on Mamdani’s open support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — Mamdani moderated his language. On Meet the Press, he said that while he didn’t believe it was the mayor’s job to police language, “that’s not language I use.” He reportedly told business leaders in New York that he will discourage use of the term. The fallout was swift.

“Zohran Mamdani forming a coalition with genocidal Zionists. This guy is going to sell out New York so hard once he wins,” one person wrote on X.

“Mamdani shift to a centrist position on Palestine shouldn’t surprise anyone,” said another. “It’s becoming clearer that Mamdani is a 2.0 version of de Blasio” — a reference to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — “and Sanders.”

“I know a lot of mamdani’s team is on here, and all i gotta advise is for him to not further concede on things like the intifada,” another wrote. “It will not matter to zionists and will only demotivate his supporters who won him the primary.”

Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani’s essential policy views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have not changed. And the outsize uproar that followed their small adjustments points to a persistent problem with the left: a rigid focus on ideology and terminology versus coalition building.

Both the congresswoman and the mayoral candidate are politicians of rare skill. They have charisma and poise that has positioned them well to deliver on issues that Democrats and progressives have been working on for decades, like universal healthcare, affordable housing and green energy. These causes are vitally important to millions of people. And yet the most effective leaders the progressive movement has had in years appear increasingly at risk of being eaten by their own over vibes.

Ocasio-Cortez is clearly feeling the frustration. “There’s a real commitment among some on the ‘left’ to literally lie about my vote record and hope if they repeat something in comment sections enough people will believe it” she posted in an Instagram story. She asserted on Bluesky that her record on Palestine is “one of the strongest in Congress. I throw down for pro-Palestine candidates.”

Who can blame her for frustration at the response to her perceived deviation from a maximalist, binary stance? “Disagreements are fine,” she wrote, defiantly. “I know where I stand.”