I agree that the distinction between defensive and offensive aid is little more than a rhetorical trick

If you know what they’re doing, and she knows what they’re doing, and you know she knows what they’re doing, then we should all be fairly clear that she’s not absolving herself from complicity.

In the case of the US-Israel relationship, the financials are more complicated than the foreign policy, and there are no consequential earmarks. The input is either more funding, or less funding.

From one approach, if the US funds Israel’s Iron Dome, Israel will have more money from not spending their own on defenses, and what they didn’t have to spend on defensive weapons, they will then spend on offensive weapons. This chain of causality is fairly direct and reasonable to trace, IMHO. In fact, it’s quite possible that they directly route gifts for defensive weapons into offensive weapons- this is Israel we’re talking about, they’re not known for engaging in good faith.

From a second approach, her vote for Iron Dome spending signals that she is holding out for the chance that both sides will de-escalate willingly, and that a peaceful agreement can be negotiated from current positions. This is wishful thinking.

From a third approach, the only thing we have seen with the potential to end the genocide is intervention by Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, or especially Iran. Any prospect of the US, the EU, or an alliance of Arab states putting an end to the genocide militarily is completely without precedent and infeasible. Israel continues to maim Gaza because its economy is still running, and its economy is still running because it has diplomatic ties and defensive systems. If they are subjected to a large number of missiles, their citizens will be forced to permanently retreat to bomb shelters; this will shut down the economy and persuade Israelis to repatriate to their countries of origin (or Germany and the US will take them), because they are wealthy enough and a large fraction of them have dual citizenship. This is the one thing that will certainly end the genocide, running out their defenses until they are confronted with the same onslaught that they have waged against Palestinians. It’s not pretty or peaceful and a few people might die in-between the bomb shelters, but this is how genocides are stopped. The day that Israel runs out of interceptors and the Shahed drones keep flying in is the day they will start negotiating the end of the genocide. Funding defensive missile capacities is simply staving that day off. It is not an intervention that directly kills people, but it is still an American intervention in the Middle East that makes the situation worse and demonstrably causes more innocent people to die.

To be sure, there are several different levels of genocide apologia, and AOC is a few levels down on the scale from your average Republican. But she’s still not clearing the bar for ethical foreign policy. The bar is to treat Israel with at least the same level of response that was given to Russia when it invaded/escalated the war in Ukraine.