AOC office covered with ‘blood-splattered’ signs after questioning exploding pager operation

“Yesterday my House office was tagged with blood-splattered signs accusing me of supporting terrorism after I questioned the pager operation, which clearly runs counter to US policy,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a post to X on Friday. “They must live under a rock to not know I don’t take well to bullies.”

The situation comes after Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that Congress needs a “full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.”

Ocasio-Cortez is joining several of her progressive Democratic colleagues in condemning the exploding pagers and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon and Syria that killed 12 people, including two young children, on Tuesday and 20 people on Wednesday. U.S. officials indicated that the strikes are believed to have been carried out by Israel as the Jewish state continues its war against Hamas. 

Several members of the “Squad,” including Ocasio-Cortez, argue the operation is a violation of international law, with the New York congresswoman saying it also violates the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual. According to Pentagon policy, “it is prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material.”

Objects under that prohibition include watches, personal audio players, cameras, toys, “and the like” that can be attractive to civilians and children.

“Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon have injured thousands and led to the death of innocent civilians, including multiple children,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) said in a post to X. “This attack not only falls in clear violation of international law but also further escalates a brewing regional conflict.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) echoed a post from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that questioned whether the U.S. should continue sending funds to Israel.

“We should not send another dime to fund the genocide,” Omar wrote on X. “Netanyahu’s reckless disregard for civilian lives in the pager attack in Lebanon is yet another example of why we need to cut off military aid.”

Whether the exploding pagers operation violates international law or Defense Department policy is unclear. The White House and Pentagon have been relatively silent on the situation.

“We refer you to Israel to speak to their own operations. We have nothing to offer above and beyond what was said in the press conferences this week,” a Department of Defense spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.

In the Pentagon’s manual, the CCW Amended Mines Protocol prohibits mines, booby traps, and other devices “that are designed or of a nature to cause unnecessary suffering.” 

“This prohibition implicitly recognizes that not all mines, boobytraps, and other devices are calculated to cause superfluous injury,” the manual states.

Brian Finucane, a senior adviser with the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, said in an online national security forum that the carriers of the pagers and electronics would have to be “lawful targets, either on the basis of their status as fighters in an organized armed group that is party to a conflict with the attacker, or due to their direct participation in hostilities.”

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John Spencer, the chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, told Newsweek that the operation was a “very precise sabotage of an enemy piece of equipment used for military purposes.”

Responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s post to X, Mark Goldfeder, the director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, said: “Communication devices issued by terrorists to terrorists for terrorist purposes do not count as civilian objects.”