Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to Mako, an Israeli news station, during an event in New York. News U.S. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Don’t conflate criticism of Netanyahu and Israel Facebook Twitter Email SMS WhatsApp Share By JTA | September 5, 2019 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said her criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be seen as shots at the Jewish state. “The Netanyahu administration has been pursuing a lot of extraordinarily concerning policies,” Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., told Israel’s Channel 12 News in a recent media opportunity in New York. The freshman lawmaker likened Netanyahu to President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked her. “To conflate an individual leader or ego with being against the entire country I think is hallmark behavior of folks like our president,” she said. “Just like we have the ability to criticize our president without being anti-American, I think we can criticize the policies” of Netanyahu without being anti-Israel. Trump has accused Ocasio-Cortez and three other progressive freshmen congresswomen(often collectively referred to as The Squad) of being anti-Semitic, apparently based on the fact that two of them, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, back Israel boycotts. (Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts do not.) Ocasio-Cortez said in the interview that Trump was using anti-Semitism to distract from his policies. “It’s done completely in bad faith and they can no longer use this allegation of anti-Semitism to defend their unjust and inhumane policies,” she said. “You can’t use this cudgel of anti-Semitism to scare people away from pointing that out.” JTA Content distributed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency news service. Also On J. Politics AOC leads push in Congress to block arms sale to Israel Politics AOC and Cruz fight over Holocaust analogies, reflecting wider rift U.S. Stephen Miller says AOC concentration camp comments offends him ‘as a Jew’ Politics Trump: Until recently Israel ‘literally owned Congress’ Subscribe to our Newsletter Enter Email Sign Up