Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AP/Cliff Owen)
Ocasio-Cortez refused to back down after comparing U.S. detention centers for illegals to “concentration camps.”
By David Isaac, World Israel News
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who sparked a firestorm of criticism after describing detention centers for illegal immigrants on the U.S. southern border as “concentration camps” on Monday, doubled down on her comments on Wednesday.
“We are calling these camps what they are because they fit squarely in an academic consensus and definition. History will be kind to those who stood up to this injustice. So say what you will. Kids are dying and I’m not here to make people feel comfortable about that,” she tweeted on Wednesday.
“DHS [Department of Homeland Security] ripped 1000s of children from their parents & put them in cages w inhumane conditions. They call their cells ‘dog pounds’ & “freezers.’ I will never apologize for calling these camps what they are,” she also tweeted.
On Monday, via her Instagram live feed, the New York congresswoman said “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.”
“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” she said, calling the Trump administration “authoritarian and fascist.”
“Never Again means something,” she said.
After coming under criticism from Republican lawmakers, Ocasio-Cortez tried to draw a distinction between concentration camps and death camps.
“And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as the mass detention of civilians without trial. And that’s exactly what this administration is doing,” she tweeted.
Despite Ocasio-Cortez attempt to distinguish the two, Jewish groups criticized the New York congresswoman for her comments, which they felt elicited terms associated with the Holocaust.
The Jewish Community Relations Council sent an open letter to the congresswoman, saying “We are deeply disturbed by the language used in your recent Instagram live video which seeks to equate the detention centers on America’s southern border with Nazi-era Concentration Camps.”
“AOC should ask Holocaust survivors and ex-GIs who liberated Dachau what that charnel House was like,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said. “She is insulting victims of genocide.”
Even Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, tweeted against Ocasio-Cortez and her comparison.
“Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labor,'” it tweeted on Wednesday.
“Learn about concentration camps,” Yad Vashem added, including links to information about the Holocaust.
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