Recently, Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), speaking during a Hanukkah celebration, at the Jackson Heights Jewish Center claimed, “One of the things that we discovered about ourselves is that a very, very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews.” Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and settled in the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Europe, and later the Western Hemisphere.

Details of her claim

Ocasio-Cortez explained that she was descended from Jews who fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, when “many people were forced to convert on the exterior to Catholicism but on the interior continued to practice their faith.” Although she has identified as Catholic, she said her understanding of her ancestry came from “doing a lot of family trees in the last couple of years.”

“A strong group of people, strong-willed, that were determined to continue living life as they wanted to, decided to get on a boat and leave Spain,” she continued, “Some of those people landed in Puerto Rico,” where her mother was born, her father is also Puerto Rican, although born in America.

Well, if Ocasio-Cortez wants to claim Jewish ancestry, she better be ready for it!

What did Ocasio-Cortez think would happen, when she compared Jewish Holocaust-era refugees to the Central American migrants, “the caravan,” seeking to enter America today?

She obviously never gave it much thought.

If she wants to attribute connection to the “tribe,” she should learn some of “her history,” throw off her shackles from the Galut (Exile), and identify openly with the struggle of her own people, the Jews, including their return to the ancient homeland they were forcibly exiled from, Israel.

Don’t be an Auntie Gringa!

Gringo (m.) or gringa (f.), is a derogatory term, a foreigner from the perspective of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking culture. Like an Uncle Tom, it was originally used in Spain to degrade any foreign, non-native speakers of Spanish, like the Sephardic Jews of old.

The derogatory term “Morranos” in Spanish, literally, “pigs,” was also used to refer to Jews. Probably because of the Jewish prohibition against eating pig meat. Ironically, in Mexican cuisine today, a gringa is a flour tortilla, with al pastor pork meat and cheese, served with chilli sauce.

Listen, the Catholic Hispanic world hated you Alexandria, that is Jews, in the Iberian peninsula and later Hispanic New World. Stop pandering to the Hispanics, those people who inquisitioned, tortured, burnt (the last as late as 1850 in Mexico), murdered, and exiled your people.

Stop identifying with the oppressor.

Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken, and ignorantly anti-Israel since her campaign. While Gazans were rioting, burning down Israeli crops with flaming kites, attacking Israeli security personnel along the Gaza-Israel border, and sending into Israel explodable balloons, Ocasio-Cortez running against Rep. Joseph Crowley in the primaries, condemned the deaths of a few Palestinians on the border, as a “massacre,” ignoring what was happening to “her own people.”

In July, she criticized the “occupation of Palestine,” but then admitted later, she was “not the expert” on the issue.

Past examples of Jews (or Jewish converts) identifying with persecutors

In the past, many Jewish converts to other faiths, like Pablo Christiani have caused the Jewish people endless suffering. So too, have descendants of converts, like Tomás de Torquemada, the first Grand Inquisitor, during the Spanish Inquisition, Karl Marx and possibly even Adolph Hitler.

The children of a Jewish father but not mother, making them non-Jews according to Jewish law, sometimes cause great problems too.

Take Frank Collin, a follower of George Lincoln Rockwell, and founder/leader of the National Socialist Party of America in Chicago during the 1970s. Collin’s father, Max Frank Collin, born Max Simon Cohn, was a Holocaust survivor who had changed his name from Cohen to Collin. Frank Collin’s mother was a Catholic. Frank Collin tormented Jews in the “Skokie Affair,” when his NSPA threatened to march in Skokie, IL, a town where one in six Jews were Holocaust survivors. The notoriety gained from this incident btw, led to the NSPA being spoofed later, in the 1980 film, The Blues Brothers.

A time to decide

Ocasio-Cortez, get off the fence (or is that a wall you’re on), you have to decide, are you part of the problem, or part of the solution. Are you identifying with the oppressors of Jews or coming back home?

Don’t think you can use the, “I’m descended from Jews” line, as a shield to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism or anti-Israelism. African-American comedians and rappers, can say “nigger, nigger, nigger,” and not be accused of racism, while others would be, but you Alexandria, we really don’t know about.

Why not convert, observe Torah and Mitzvot (why they hated us so much), and move back to Israel, your ancestral homeland, where you can live as a free, proud, open Jewess and help in a historic project, the rebuilding of Jewish civilization. Then we’ll know for sure that you’re Jewish.

Alexandria, come out of the closet, and bring your menorah!

Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a Master’s Degree specializing in International Relations, Political Economy & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers. His latest articles can also be read on his archive: The Think Tank by Ariel Natan Pasko.

© 2018/5779 Pasko

Editor’s Note:

The author mentions a certain racial slur here only to condemn it.