Ocasio-Cortez takes hardline stance against all military aid to Israel

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday said the U.S. should not provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, clarifying her position on the issue.

“The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system, which has proven critical to keep innocent civilians safe from rocket attacks and bombardment,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on the social platform X. “Consistent with my voting record to date, I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law.”

The Iron Dome, which was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, is a short-range missile defense system. 

Completed in 2011, it has a radar system that detects incoming threats, a command-and-control system that calculates their trajectory and a missile launcher that “fires interceptors only when a rocket threatens civilian lives or infrastructure,” according to the American Jewish Committee.

Ocasio-Cortez also noted that the Israeli Knesset approved a record $45.8 billion for the country’s Defense Ministry this week and referenced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling The Economist in January that he wanted to eliminate Israel’s reliance on U.S. military aid over the next decade.

“It is fully within their ability to fund Iron Dome and other defensive systems. Our allies who need our military aid must understand that we will provide it consistent with the Leahy amendment and the foreign assistance act,” the New York Democrat added, referring to a federal statute that bars the federal government from funding a foreign military that violates human rights. 

Ocasio-Cortez has long criticized U.S. support for the the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, but in 2021, she voted “present” on a $1 billion supplemental funding bill for the Iron Dome.

At the time, Ocasio-Cortez wrote that while she opposed the bill, House Democratic leadership “rushed” a “sensitive, charged, and under-considered vote” by including the bill in legislation without allowing for committee debate, markup or regular order. She also noted that the U.S. had already provided $1.7 billion in funding for the Iron Dome since 2011. 

Last year, in voting against a defense amendment sponsored by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that proposed cutting off support for the Iron Dome, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X that the measure did “nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions” the Israeli military has used in Gaza.

“What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue,” she continued. “I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end.”

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