The American Israel Public Affairs Committee criticized Democratic lawmakers for their “timidity” on Iran’s killing of teenagers protesting the regime.
“All quiet from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal,” AIPAC stated on Tuesday. “So-called champions for human rights have a blind eye for a repressive regime that just mowed down its own people.”
“Shameful hypocrisy,” the lobbying group added, sharing a Wall Street Journal story alleging that “an expanding list of teenagers and other young people” have been killed by Iran.
“Nothing to say if they can’t blame Israel,” AIPAC wrote.
While all the lawmakers listed, except for Omar, have released statements condemning violence against Iranian protesters, AIPAC noted the relative silence compared to their condemnations of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
“For two years, the ‘Performative Outrage Squad’ raced to microphones to lecture about their supposed concern for human rights and civilian lives,” Deryn Sousa, a spokesperson for AIPAC, told JNS on Wednesday.
“Their timidity now, as the Iranian regime butchers its own people yearning to be free, exposes their anti-Israel criticism as hollow posturing—phony virtue signaling to smear and lie about the world’s only Jewish state,” Sousa said.
Jayapal, who recently met with the liberal Jewish organization J Street and the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace, wrote about the Iranian protesters on Jan. 22. “My heart is with the families of those killed by the Iranian government,” she stated.
Sanders, who condemned the Trump administration on Monday for “spending taxpayer dollars to arm Netanyahu’s genocidal government,” has not posted about the Iranian protesters on his social media.
In a Jan. 13 statement in which he blamed the existence of the Iranian regime on “Western-backed intervention” to “protect Western oil interests,” Sanders called on Iran to end violence against protesters.
