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Meet The Liberal Zionist And Ukraine War Supporter Advising AOC On Foreign Policy

The Dissident | February 18, 2026

Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent appearence at the Munich Security Conference, which was billed as her showcasing her foreign policy chops gearing up for a possible presidential run, has faced widespread criticism and backlash, not only for her embarrassing mistakes (saying Venezuela was located below the equator, being unable to answer a question about Taiwan and saying the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” when meaning to say the Trans Atlantic Partnership) but for her weak criticism of U.S. foreign policy and repeating of pro-war narratives.

This, however, can be easily explained by the fact that she is being coached by Matt Duss, a longtime foreign policy advisor and a liberal Zionist and staunch supporter of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine.

Ahead of the conference, the New York Times reported :

She has been receiving regular briefings from the Center for International Policy, a left-wing foreign policy think tank in Washington. Matt Duss, a vice president at the group and a former Sanders aide, said he was among those who had tutored her on foreign policy.

“She is someone who is engaged with parts of the world that are often not represented in Munich,” Mr. Duss said.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance will undoubtedly ignite speculation that she is burnishing her foreign policy credentials before a White House run. But she is keeping everyone guessing. Unlike other more obviously ambitious Democrats, she has not made winking, presidential-coded trips to early primary states in recent months or written a tell-all memoir.

This better explains why she was so weak of U.S. foreign policy: Duss styles himself a U.S. foreign policy critic but often repeats the narratives of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and at times, such as on Ukraine, is with it 100 per cent.

Peddling Liberal Zionism

On Israel and the Zionist lobby, Matt Duss is a typical liberal Zionist, offering some criticism of Israel but ultimately supporting Zionism and Zionist narratives.

A 2011 article on Matt Duss in Politico wrote , “Duss says he’s mischaracterized by his critics as anti-Israel. He is quick to note that he sympathizes with Israel, in part from his personal roots in American evangelical Christianity and that if American criticism of Israel should be harsher, it should also be done with the recognition that Israel is a democracy that should be held to high standards. Iran, meanwhile, is ‘abusing their own people, they support terrorism, and they say all sorts of horrible things about the U.S. and Israel,’ he said.”

This liberal Zionism, apparently influenced by a Christian Zionist upbringing, was on full display during the early months of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where Duss, repeated Israeli propaganda, smeared actual anti-Zionists and even opposed calls for a ceasefire.

After the October 7th Hamas breakout from the Gaza concentration camp, Duss quoted an article, from New York Magazine, writing, “What we actually witnessed was not ‘the Palestinians’ mounting a violent struggle for justice but a far-right theocratic organization committing mass murder in the name of blood-and-soil nationalism” without mentioning any of the history preceding October 7th, including the Israeli blockade on Gaza which former UK prime minister David Cameron admitted turned Gaza into a “a prison camp” and an “open-air prison”, the previous peaceful protests against the blockade in Gaza in 2018, which were met with Israeli slaughter , the Abraham Accords which sought to get Arab States to abandon the Palestinian cause, and Benjamin Netanyahu putting up a map at the UN which “depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” where “Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased” weeks before October 7th.

In December of 2023, Matt Duss repeated the fabricated claim that Hamas carried out mass rape on October 7th, writing, “Denying the rape and sexual violence that Hamas committed on Oct 7 is disgusting”, repeating a hoax that was used not only to justify the Gaza genocide, but also actual mass rape against Palestinian detainees in Israel’s torture dungeons.

In another article written by Duss in December of 2023, he wrote , “Israel’s methods are not as extreme as Russia’s, and it’s very important to acknowledge that”, ignoring the fact that in November of 2023 , Israel had killed over 10,000 civilians in Gaza while Russia killed 9,806 in Ukraine since the start of the war in 2022.

In a New York Times article, Matt Duss celebrated Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon, which even former CIA director Leon Panetta conceded was “a form of terrorism” writing, “There’s no question that Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon in recent weeks was an impressive tactical feat”.

In November of 2023, Duss even opposed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza by defending Senator Bernie Sander’s comments in opposition to a ceasefire at the time (which were approvingly shared by AIPAC ), saying, “I think what the Senator said there about the challenges of a ceasefire being negotiated with an organisation like Hamas are valid”.

While peddling Zionist talking points, Duss took the time to smear actual anti-Zionists, such as labelling the brilliant Anti-Zionist academic Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish son of holocaust survivors, as an anti-semite.

Referring to the Jewish Zionist billionaires attempting to shut down pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Finkelstein wrote , “The Jewish billionaire class has declared war on our nation’s universities: Either you support Israel’s genocidal war or we will destroy you” and Duss replied , “We can and must have a conversation about the very real dangers to academic freedom without antisemitic ‘Jewish billionaire class’ nonsense, which both endangers Jews and undermines the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”

Supporting The Ukraine Proxy War

Along with his peddling of Zionist narratives, Duss fully supported NATO and the Biden administration’s proxy war in Ukraine.

In an article for the New Republic in 2022, Duss wrote, “The Biden team clearly did not seek this war (in Ukraine), in fact, they made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it. Having been unable to do that, they’ve acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia while also making clear the stakes of the conflict for the U.S., for Europe, and for the international system.”

In reality, last year, one of Biden’s top advisors for Europe policy, Amanda Sloat, admitted that the Biden administration could have ended the war in Ukraine, and chose not to, saying, “We had some conversation even before the war started, about what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion,’ which at that point it may well have done” and adding, “I guess if you want to do an alternative version of history, one option would have just been for Ukraine to say in January of 2022, ‘fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, we will stay neutral.’ Ukraine could have made a deal around March/April of 2022 around the Istanbul talks. There is certainly a question, almost three years on now, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do in Istanbul talks, it certainly would have prevented the destruction and the loss of life”.

Matt Duss on serval occasions denied the fact that the war could have ended in April of 2022 has Boris Johnson not intervened and stopped the peace deal that Russia and Ukraine agreed to in Istanbul. On Twitter, Duss wrote , “If you’re so committed to your narrative that you believe that Zelensky Could’ve simply ended the devastating war on his country in April but then Boris Johnson showed up and said nah so he didn’t, I recommend stepping back and taking a series of deep, relaxing breaths” and “ doesn’t matter how quickly the Sy Hersh story gets refuted, it’s already become part of the alternate reality where Biden induced Putin to invade and Russia would’ve ended the war in March if Boris Johnson hadn’t said nah.”

This is despite the fact that Boris Johnson’s blocking of the peace deal in Istanbul has been confirmed by

• Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
• Lead Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia
• The foreign minister of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
• Gerhard Schröder, the ex-leader of Germany
• Victoria Nuland then U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs
• Oleksii Arestovych a member of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks
• Amanda Sloat, lead Biden advisor on Ukraine
• Andrej Babiš, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic

Duss has repeatedly praised the Biden Administration for the proxy war in Ukraine, saying in 2023, “The administration … on the way the president has helped manage alliance and partnerships in response to Russia’s invasion of last February, I think has been impressive, I think it shows a way of practising U.S. leadership that forges consensus and then mobilises that consensus.”

As late as January of last year, Duss said, Biden can “claim some credit for rallying allies for the defence of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion”.

Duss even admitted in reference to the Ukraine proxy war that, “the policy I support continues to enrich defense contractors, enriches the military-industrial complex” adding, “I think the goal of reforming that military industrial complex and weakening its power over our politics, that project continues in the longer term even though the policy I support in the shorter term is essentially paying them off.”

The fact that AOC is being “tutored” by Matt Duss on foreign policy explains her failures when speaking on it.

February 19, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | United States, Zionism