Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-CortezReuters

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has asserted that US President Donald Trump is anti-Semitic following his attacks on Rep. Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, JTA reported Sunday.

“Understand that Trump is engaged in deliberate, atrocious, targeted antisemitism towards Chairman Schiff. Then ask yourself why no one cares to denounce it – esp when his accusation of it towards others drove full news cycles earlier this year,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Saturday, retweeting an article in The Intercept suggesting that Trump’s attacks against Schiff come from the neo-Nazi playbook.

“It’s wrong. It’s harmful. And his bigotry is reflective of the white supremacist base he relies on for political gain,” she added.

Her comments came after Trump criticized Schiff on Wednesday for his part in the impeachment proceedings against him.

“We don’t call him ‘Shifty Schiff’ for nothing. He’s a shifty, dishonest guy,” Trump charged.

The Intercept article retweeted by Ocasio-Cortez said that calling Jews shifty – suggesting that they are sneaky and manipulative, is an age-old anti-Semitic canard.

Trump’s son, Donald Jr., in a tweet said that Schiff was “hand-picked and supported by George Soros,” and called him a Soros “puppet.”

Responses to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet noted that Trump’s daughter and grandchildren are Jewish, and that most people were unaware that Schiff was Jewish until they read her tweet.

Ocasio-Cortez has herself come under fire for several controversial statements involving Israel.

Last month, the freshman Congresswoman criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News while arguing that criticizing Israel’s policies is not being anti-Semitic.

In a radio interview in August, Ocasio-Cortez said that Israel is “criminal” in its treatment of Palestinian Arabs, whom she said have no other choice but to “riot” against the Jewish state.

She also caused an uproar in June after she claimed that the United States “is running concentration camps on our southern border.”

In April, she caused an uproar after she quoted a passage about the Holocaust to defend Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was criticized for downplaying the 9/11 attacks.

Also in April, she said that cutting military and economic aid to Israel as a way to signal opposition to Israeli policies should be “on the table.”