Ocasio Cortez Jewish Ancestry
Ariel Natan Pasko
Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a Master's Degree in International Relations & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers.Ocasio-Cortez and the Complexity of Jewish Ancestry. I thought of my students when I heard the news that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a newly minted congresswoman from New York, revealed her own.
Recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 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.
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.
- Ocasio-Cortez reveals Jewish heritage for Hanukkah. Eastbound lanes of I-10 reopen after three 18-wheeler wreck shuts down interstate in Orange Monday morning.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed her Jewish heritage - YouTube.
- Listen to Ocasio-Cortez speak about Puerto Rico’s Jewish history during a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice event in Queens. At Hanukkah event with @JFREJNYC in an moving speech, @Ocasio2018 shares that her family were Sephardic Jews who fled to Puerto Rico.
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.
By openly admitting to Jewish ancestry, Ocasio-Cortez has brought disrepute to Jews and Israel, because of her “self-hating” Israel-bashing.
If she wants to attribute connection to the “tribe,” she should learn some of “her' history, throw off her Galut/Exile shackles, 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.
Stop being a 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 “Marranos” 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.
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.
The Catholic Hispanic world hated you Alexandria, that is Jews, in the Iberian peninsula and later Hispanic New World.
Ocasio-Cortez has been outspoken, and ignorantly anti-Israel since her campaign began. 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 violent Palestinian Arabs storning Israel's 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.
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.
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. Maybe some 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.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Ancestry
Why not convert 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.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Jewish Roots
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.
(c) 2018/5779 Pasko
Democratic congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has claimed that she is descended from Sephardic Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism.
Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected last month to the US House of Representatives for New York State’s 14th congressional district, told supporters at a Hannukah party organized by the left-wing Jews for Racial and Economic Justice that she has Jewish heritage.
“A very, very long time ago – generations and generations ago – my family consisted of Sephardic Jews,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“The story goes, during the Spanish Inquisition, so many people were forced to convert on the exterior to Catholicism, but on the interior continued to practice their faith and continued to be who they were, even though they were pressured to not be that on the outside world.”
Her family later fled to Puerto Rico to escape persecution, Ocasio-Cortez said.
Following the expulsion of non-Christians from Spain in 1492, thousands of Sephardic Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism. Many continued to practice Judaism in secret even after ostensibly converting to Catholicism.
Many of these secret Jews, dubbed the “Anusim” (‘Coerced Ones’), emigrated to the Western Hemisphere, settling in colonies across what would become Latin America.
According to Reconectar, an NGO which helps descendants of Anusim reconnect with their Jewish heritage, there are at least 14 to 15 million self-identified ‘Bnei Anusim’ (descendants of Anusim), with as many as 100 million descendants worldwide of Iberian Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism.
“Given the birthrate over the years, studies have estimated the number of descendants of these Jews at anywhere from 100 million to 150 million and even some who claim there are as many as 200 million around the world descended from Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” Reconectar President Ashley Perry told Arutz Sheva.
According to the Beit Hatfutsot (Diaspora Museum) in Tel Aviv, Cortez, Ocasio-Cortez’s mother’s maiden name, was a Jewish family name.
Last month, Ocasio-Cortez drew criticism after she compared Jewish Holocaust refugees to members of the so-called ‘migrant caravan’ from Central America seeking to enter the United States.
“Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio Cortez Religion
“It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda.
It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.”