By Aaron Bandler

(JANUARY 4, 2022 / JEWISH JOURNAL) A legislative assistant staffer for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is under fire over a social media post calling Israel a “racist European ethnostate.”

Fox News reported that the staffer, Hussain Altamimi, posted an Instagram story on December 24 featuring an image from an account called “Let’s Talk Palestine” stating that “Israeli apartheid” is “about whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish.” It went on to call Israel “an exclusive ethnostate.” Altamimi wrote in the story: “Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!” Altamimi was hired by Ocasio-Cortez’s office in November, per Fox News.

Various Jewish and pro-Israel Twitter accounts criticized Altamimi and Ocasio-Cortez.

“New beginnings? No @aoc – your legislative assistant just repackaged old hate + old lies about the incredibly diverse Jewish people,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted. “Shameful. Does he speak for you? America deserves an honest answer.”

Siamak Kordestani, West Coast Director of the European Leadership Network, tweeted that Altamimi’s remarks are “wrong for many reasons, and it erases Mizrahi Jews like me. A majority of Jewish Israelis are descendants of 850,000 Jews violently expelled from Arab countries.”

Stop Antisemitism also tweeted that Altamimi’s comments invoked “disgusting white supremacist type tropes against the world’s sole Jewish nation” and asked Ocasio-Cortez “how is someone like this employed by you?!”

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton Klein tweeted that Hamimi’s remarks “just viciously & falsely condemned Israel. ZOA demands AOC fire him immediately. It’s the Palestinian Authority that’s a racist terrorist dictatorship which states no Jews will be allowed to live in their entity and pays Arabs to murder Jews.”

Fox News reported that Ocasio-Cortez’s office declined to comment on their inquiry. Her office did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment as of this writing.

This article was originally published in the Jewish Journal and can be viewed here.