Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) sharply rebuked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) over his claim Saturday that all Palestinians living in Gaza are antisemitic.
“How incredibly destructive and dangerous that rhetoric is,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN Monday.
“We just had a six-year-old boy stabbed 26 times this morning because of rhetoric like that,” she said, referring to Wadea Al Fayoume, a Palestinian-American killed in an anti-Muslim hate crime by his Chicago-area landlord. The boy’s mother was hospitalized after being stabbed more than a dozen times.
“It is dangerous, it is unacceptable, it is reckless and no leader in the United States of America should be amplifying a message like that,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.
DeSantis’ comment came as he advocated against the U.S. accepting any refugees from Gaza. He doubled down on his argument on Sunday, saying that the U.S. accepting refugees would increase antisemitism and anti-Americanism because Gaza teaches “kids to hate Jews” and prepares “very young kids to commit terrorist attacks.”
Ocasio-Cortez noted in the interview that “there’s something to be said” about countries in the region stepping up to accept refugees, but that “does not abdicate the United States from our historic role that we’ve played in the world of accepting refugees and allowing people to restart their lives here.”
The issue of where Palestinians from Gaza could flee to has been spotlit as the Israel-Hamas war enters its second week.
More than 1,400 Israelis have died since Oct. 7 and 199 are being held hostage by Hamas. In Gaza, the death toll is over 2,800, according to officials.
Jordan’s monarch, King Abdullah II, said on Tuesday that Jordan and Egypt would not accept any refugees displaced by the conflict.
“This is a red line,” Abdullah said. “No refugees to Jordan and also no refugees to Egypt.”
Other 2024 GOP candidates have echoed those sentiments that they would not want to accept refugees.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza “is not a United States refugee issue” and that the responsibility falls on nearby countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to “step up.”
And former President Donald Trump—the frontrunner among primary contenders—on Monday said that he would not only bar refugees from Gaza but would also expand his controversial first-term travel ban targeting Muslim countries.
“We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen or Libya or anywhere else that threatens our security,” Trump said.
