Israel war: AOC blasts Lindsey Graham for using ‘textbook rhetoric of ethnic cleansing’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slammed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for using “textbook rhetoric of ethnic cleansing” when discussing how Israel should respond to terrorist attacks committed by Hamas over the weekend.

Ocasio-Cortez was responding to a clip Graham had posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he called for Israel to “do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself” and said Israel could level Gaza to do that. The New York Democrat claimed that the video was justifying the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

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“This is textbook rhetoric of ethnic cleansing that cannot be accepted in any civil society, let alone the United States. It is an affront to humanity to weaponize this horrific trauma to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a post on X. “It is dangerous and must stop.”

In a clip shared from Graham’s appearance on Fox News’s Hannity on Tuesday, the South Carolina Republican had said that the conflict in Israel was a “religious war.”

“We’re in a religious war. I stand with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself, level the place,” Graham said.

Ocasio-Cortez has been a critic of the Israeli government and an advocate for Palestinians but was forceful in her condemnation of the terrorist attacks by Hamas and the antisemitic rally in New York City over the weekend.

“The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday. “It also did not speak for the thousands of New Yorkers who are capable of rejecting both Hamas’s horrifying attacks against innocent civilians as well as the grave injustices and violence Palestinians face under occupation.”

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Graham has been a staunch advocate for Israel and criticized the Biden administration’s policy toward Iran in the aftermath of the attacks in Israel following a report that Iran was involved in the planning of Hamas’s terrorist attack.

Israel declared war against Hamas, the first time it had declared war since 1973, shortly after the attacks on Saturday. The conflict has killed at least 2,500 people in Israel and Gaza since the first terrorist attacks by Hamas, according to the Associated Press. The State Department has said that at least 25 Americans are among the dead in Israel.