Ocasio-Cortez on confrontation with protesters at theater: ‘It’s f‑‑‑ed up’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hit back at protesters who were following and filming her at a theater over the weekend and who heckled her about her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly criticized the war, but the protesters filming her accused her of not calling the war in Gaza a “genocide.”

“You refuse to call it a genocide,” one of the protesters says in the video, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to respond with, “I need you to understand that this is not OK.”

When the protester shot back that it’s “not OK that there’s a genocide happening and you’re not actively against it,” the New York Democrat said they were “lying.”

The protesters followed her down an escalator and out the doors of the theater, still accusing her of refusing to call the Israeli attacks in Gaza “a genocide.”

As she exited the building, the protesters continued to follow her down the street.

The video then cut to Ocasio-Cortez turning to the camera and accusing the protesters of planning to edit the video to make it look like she said something she did not.

“And you’re gonna cut this — you’re gonna clip this so that it’s completely out of context,” she told the protester.

“I already said that it was. And y’all are just going to pretend that it wasn’t over and over again,” Ocasio-Cortez says in the video, referring to calling Gaza a genocide.

“It’s f‑‑‑ed up, man. You’re not helping your people. And you’re not helping them. You’re not helping them,” she said.

Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly called for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and has raised concerns about the Israeli attacks in Gaza, where the health ministry has reported that more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onset of the war.

She said in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in January that the accusations that President Biden is enabling genocide in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war demonstrate the “mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing.”  

She pointed to the International Court of Justice, which said in a preliminary ruling earlier this year that Israel must contain civilian deaths in Gaza, when asked if accusing Biden of condoning genocide goes “too far.”

“I believe that they are they are — they’re still determining it. But in the interim ruling, the fact that they said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the time.

The Hill has reached out to Ocasio-Cortez’s office for comment.