In House floor speech, US Rep. Ocasio-Cortez accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ in Gaza

US Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip during a speech in the House of Representatives on Friday, the New York Times reports.

Although she has sharply condemned Israel throughout the war with the Hamas terror organization, the progressive Democrat had not explicitly accused Israel of genocide prior to her speech on Friday.

“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes,” the New York Times quotes her as saying in an appeal for US President Joe Biden to suspend aid to Israel. “It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away.”

Israel has denied that it is withholding humanitarian assistance from civilians in Gaza, instead blaming the United Nations for not delivering the supplies fast enough once they clear security checks, and for leading to a general fall-off in deliveries in recent months.

Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to avoid labeling the war in Gaza a genocide over the last few months had set her apart from her fellow progressive Democrats. It also angered her voter base and she was accosted by far-left activists earlier this month as she left a movie theater in Brooklyn with her fiancée.