Queens Reps Show Support For Gaza, Criticize U.S. Aid To Israel

ASTORIA, QUEENS — A growing number of progressive politicians in northwestern Queens are standing in solidarity with Palestinians and criticizing Congress for sending billions of dollars in unconditional military aid to Israel, as the nation-state continues fatal aerial attacks of the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from Hamas this week.

Since violence escalated in the region on Monday, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-NY), City Councilmember Jessica Ramos, and City Council candidates from Astoria and Long Island City, including Tiffany Cabán, Evie Hantzopoulos, Julie Won, and Amit Bagga, have all taken to Twitter to protest Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani also spoke out this week on the floor of the House of Representatives and at a rally in Manhattan, respectively.

The politicians’ criticism of Israel comes after weeks of violence between Israeli police and far-right-wing activists and Palestinian protesters over planned Palestian evictions in East Jerusalem, followed by the most significant Israeli military operation since 2014.

As of Friday, the Gaza Health ministry reported that Israeli airstrikes have killed 103 Palestinians, including 27 children, while Hamas rocket fire has reportedly killed seven Israelis, including one child and one soldier.

Ocasio-Cortez called the forced evictions “inhumane,” Won said “the murder and displacement of Palestinian children is tragic and unequivocally wrong,” and Cabán drew an analogy between the central tenants of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the calls for justice in Palestine.

Also, Mamdani repeatedly stated his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel on Twitter, while Hantzopoulos shared a video of a hospital in Gaza inundated by patients critically wounded in airstrikes writing “our tax dollars paid for this. More than $146 billion to date mostly for the Israeli military. Blood is on our hands, too.”

The politicians' stances on Israel-Palestine point to the increasingly ascendant left in Queens.

Following Ocasio-Cortez’s historic victory over 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in 2018, a series of non-establishment, progressive candidates ran campaigns in Queens, including a handful of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed (DSA) candidates — Mamdani and Cabán among them.

The DSA assumes a pro-Palestine stance — which has increasingly become a part of these politicians' platforms, too.

Despite initially stumbling when she spoke out against settlements, Ocasio-Cortez has since defended her position of applying the same standards of human rights to Israel as she does anywhere in the world; a point she most recently brought up Thursday evening on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“We have to have the courage to name our contributions,” she said, alluding to the billions of dollars that the federal government gives to Israel annually. “Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the reason we don’t do that, if we’re scared to stand up to the incarceration of children in Palestine, is because maybe it’ll force us to confront the incarceration of children here on our border,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

Mamdani, who participated in a Tuesday rally in front of the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, also criticized the U.S. government’s annual contributions to Israel in a statement to Patch.

“Our federal government invests $3.8B annually in military aid to Israel, making us complicit in this brutality,” he said, adding that as a Queens representative it is important for him to stand in solidarity with Palestine because “our fight for dignity cannot be limited by the bounds of our districts, it must be universal, and without exception.”

He also pointed out that he chooses solidarity with Palestine “the same way our constituents in Queens do” — alluding to the residents and community groups in his district who have also demonstrated support for Palestinians during the past week.