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AOC Withdraws From Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Event Following Pro-Palestinian Criticism

The event will be held in October by Americans for Peace Now.
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September 25, 2020
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 24: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), is seen as U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifies during a hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on August 24, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee is holding a hearing on “Protecting the Timely Delivery of Mail, Medicine, and Mail-in Ballots.” (Photo by Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) withdrew from an upcoming event honoring the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin following criticism from pro-Palestinian voices.

Americans for Peace Now (APN), which is hosting the event on Oct. 20, announced in a Sept. 24 tweet that Ocasio-Cortez will be reflecting “on fulfilling the courageous Israeli leader’s mission for peace and justice today in the US and Israel.”

https://twitter.com/PeaceNowUS/status/1309180744745529344?s=20

 

Alex Kane, a contributing writer for the progressive magazine Jewish Currents, tweeted, “So @AOC is doing a memorial event for Yitzhak Rabin. In the US Rabin is viewed as a liberal peacemaker but Palestinians remember him for his brutal rule suppressing Palestinian protest during the First Intifada, as someone who reportedly ordered the breaking of Palestinian bones.”

He added in a subsequent tweet, “As for his peacemaking — Oslo was an achievement for the Palestinian and Israeli authorities who negotiated it, but in practice gave Israel cover to build more settlements.”

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to Kane, “Hey there — this event and my involvement was presented to my team differently from how it’s now being promoted. Thanks for pointing it out. Taking a look into this now.”

 

A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez told the Times of Israel (TOI) that Ocasio-Cortez won’t be attending the event after all but didn’t state why. A source told TOI that Ocasio-Cortez’s “office did not realize the event would be framed around commemorating Rabin, as opposed to an opportunity to offer Ocasio-Cortez’s policies for the region.”

Pro-Palestinian accounts criticized Ocasio-Cortez for being scheduled to appear at the Rabin memorial.

“Regardless of content, @AOC should not be speaking at an event that rehabilitates the legacy of Rabin and the ‘peace process,’ which was aimed at establishing an autonomy arrangement of permanent subjugation and never the prospects of (even) a truncated Palestinian state,” Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat tweeted.

 

“Reprehensible for @AOC to honor Yitzhak Rabin, the war criminal who personally oversaw 1948 Lydda Death March, and during the first intifada ordered Israeli soldiers to break bones of Palestinian children,” Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the pro-Palestinian website Electronic Intifada, tweeted. “It shows total contempt for Palestinian lives.

“Seriously, what’s next? Will @AOC be joining @JoeBiden at a commemoration to honor Strom Thurmond?”

CNN’s Jake Tapper, on the other hand, tweeted, “.@AOC is being attacked for participating in a Memorial Event for Yitzhak Rabin who was literally assassinated by a right-wing Israeli zealot for his peace efforts with the Palestinians, especially Oslo.”

 

Tablet senior writer Yair Rosenberg similarly tweeted, “If @AOC can’t even do an event with *Peace Now* remembering Yitzhak Rabin, the general turned peacemaker killed by a far-right extremist for trying to make peace with the Palestinians, it suggests caring more about Twitter than good real world outcomes. Hope that’s not the case.”

https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1309514850792599552?s=20

 

Rosenberg added in a subsequent tweet that he hoped that Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet was “just a misunderstanding about framing or promotion of the event, and not some repudiation of Rabin, because my sense is that contra her critics, AOC is wiser and more strategic than Twitter’s worst instincts on things like this. Guess we’ll see.”

https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1309521031065894913?s=20

 

Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel during President Barack Obama’s administration, also tweeted, “If @AOC is getting some bad advice, or undue pressure, to rethink her participation in a Yitzhak Rabin memorial, I hope she will not back down. Honoring Rabin, an Israeli patriot killed for trying to make peace, in no way detracts from a commitment to Palestinians’ rights.”

 

Rabin was elected as Israeli prime minister in June 1992. In November 1995, right-wing extremist Yigal Amir shot Rabin in the chest twice as Rabin was leaving a rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 after the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993; Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994

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