But some liberals took the argument in a different, even more fanciful direction. They called the Squad "hypocrites" for voting against the $1bn funding, arguing that Iron Dome missiles not only save Israelis, but Palestinians too. One Haaretz commentator went so far as to claim that Palestinians were actually the main beneficiaries of the Iron Dome system, arguing: "The fact Israel has a defensive shield against rocket attacks makes a wide-scale military operation with thousands of - mainly Palestinian - casualties less likely."
Of course, there is the small question of whether Israel has indeed been "forced" into its attacks on Gaza. It is precisely its military superiority - paid for by the US - that has freed it to carry out those massive attacks, in which large numbers of Palestinians, including hundreds of children, are killed, rather than negotiate an end to its decades-long occupation.
Just as in life, bullies resort to intimidation and violence because they feel no need to compromise. But even more to the point, Iron Dome is central to Israel's efforts to keep Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, entirely subjugated and stripped of any power to resist.
With Israel patrolling tiny Gaza's land borders and coast, sealing off the enclave from the rest of the world, Palestinians have few options to protest their slow starvation - or to gain attention for their plight. Israeli snipers have fired on Palestinians staging unarmed, mass protests at the fence caging them in, killing and wounding thousands. The Israeli navy fires on or sinks Palestinian boats, including fishing boats, in Gaza's waters if they stray more than a few kilometres from the shore.
Iron Dome, far from being defensive, is another weapon in Israel's armoury to keep Palestinians subdued, impoverished, corralled and silent. For those claiming to want peace in Israel-Palestine, the extra funding for Iron Dome just made that prospect even less likely. As long as Palestinians can be made to slowly expire in silence - their plight ignored by the rest of the world - Israel is free to seize and colonise yet more of what was supposed to become a future Palestinian state.
Systems of dominationBut there is another reason why Ocasio-Cortez should have voted against the Iron Dome resupply, rather than tearfully abstaining - and that is for all our sakes, not just the sake of Palestinians.
The US foots the bill for Iron Dome, just as it does for most of Israel's other weapons development, for self-interested reasons: because it helps its own war industries, as Washington seeks to maintain its military dominance globally.
With western populations less willing to sacrifice their sons and daughters for the sake of modern wars, which seem less obviously related to defence and more transparently about the control of key resources, the Pentagon has worked overtime to reframe the public debate.
It is hard to disguise its global domination industries as anything but offensive in nature. This is where Israel has played a critical role. Not only has Israel helped to develop weapons systems like Iron Dome, but - despite being a nuclear-armed, belligerent, occupying state - it has leveraged its image as a vulnerable refuge for the long-persecuted Jewish people. It has been able to make more plausible the case that these domination systems really are defensive.
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