An upstate campaign event for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hit all the antisemitic notes as college students led chants calling for an end to Israel as a Jewish state.
Ocasio-Cortez, campaigning in Ithaca ahead of an expected run for the U.S. Senate, drew a crowd of some 2000 Democratic socialist-aligned college students to her “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall. Led by Cornell University Young Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Mina Petrova and Zoe Reisman, students sang the antisemitic slogan, “from the river to the sea.” If that was not enough to drive the point home, they also chanted, “long live the student intifada.”
Petrova, speaking to the crowd ahead of the congresswoman’s appearance, riled up the crowd by trashing her Ivy League school: “Cornell is fundamentally a capitalist institution that prioritizes billionaires and profit over students and community and is controlled by CEO trustees that are profiting off of genocide and war.”
Ocasio-Cortez also took potshots at the elite university, suggesting that Cornell had not handled student protests in an acceptable manner. She made no effort to distance herself from the chanting and singing that had taken place prior to her taking the stage.
“Whether it’s the issue about Palestine or many others. Whether it’s about people trying to fire those who are forming a union in their workplace, whether it’s people trying to speak up about a number of different issues, we have to respond to that first crackdown,” she said. “When we come out in numbers, they cannot take us all.”
The chant echoed by so many at that event — “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — has long been recognized as a call for the total eradication of Israel (from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) as a Jewish state. Even the United States House of Representatives voted in 2024 to declare the chant hateful and antisemitic in nature — but Ocasio-Cortez voted against that resolution.
The Bronx-based politician advertised the event as “part of an effort by the Congresswoman to boost turnout in Democratic strongholds ahead of the November election” — but most saw it as an effort to make inroads ahead of a broader run for statewide office, the U.S. Senate, or eventually the presidential nomination.
Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) was initially scheduled to appear alongside Ocasio-Cortez at another event upstate earlier on Sunday, but withdrew, citing concerns about the major storm system attacking the Northeast.
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