Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, pulling an Elizabeth Warren, now claims to be descended from Sephardi Jews (update)

From JPost:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of 435 members of the incoming US House of Representatives, said on Monday that members of her family were Sephardim who were forced to flee to Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition.

Ocasio-Cortez was speaking at an event marking the eighth and final night of Hanukkah, at a gathering held with the Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. She thanked the organization on a social media account for assembling the festivities.

“So many of our destinies are tied beyond our understanding,” Ocasio-Cortez said regarding her family lineage.

“A very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardi... Jews.”

Ocasio-Cortez told the audience of her family’s struggles as Sephardim, and how they were forced to flee into the mountains of Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition and practice Catholicism as a front to escape antisemitic oppression.

“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,” the newly elected New York congresswoman told the crowd.

At Hanukkah event with @JFREJNYC in an moving  speech, @Ocasio2018 shares that her family were Sephardic Jews who fled to Puerto Rico. “So many of our destinies are tied beyond our understanding” pic.twitter.com/68bjuCFnDD

— Taly Krupkin (@TalyKrupkin) December 10, 2018

She is already trying to walk back this ridiculous assertion, which if true she would have revealed during her campaign:

Before everyone jumps one me - yes, culture isn’t DNA.

But to be Puerto Rican is to be the descendant of:
African Moors + slaves,
Taino Indians,
Spanish colonizers,
Jewish refugees,
and likely others.

We are all of these things and something else all at once - we are Boricua. https://t.co/IFC4mwAjor

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 10, 2018

If anything, the stories of our ancestry give us windows of opportunity to lean into others, to seek them out, and see ourselves, our histories, and our futures, tightly knit with other communities in a way we perhaps never before thought possible.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) December 10, 2018

Essentially, she's saying that since she is Puerto Rican, she must have some Jewish blood. But that doesn't jive with her story she said yesterday, saying as fact that her family specifically " were forced to flee into the mountains of Puerto Rico during the Spanish Inquisition and practice Catholicism as a front to escape antisemitic oppression."

That is like someone who is 1/1024th black claiming to be oppressed as a slave.

It is all appearances. Facts don't matter to those who attempt to be the winners in the Oppression Olympics.

While it is possible that she does have some Jewish blood, it is nothing but politics for her to identify at this point in her life for the first time as partially Jewish. If she never identified as such, she doesn't get "oppression points" for her suppose ancestors to have fled to the mountains of Puerto Rico.

UPDATE: I am told by an expert that Hispanics in the New World can often find that their DNA is between 10-20% Sephardic Jewish and many can trace their family lineage back to 1492. I still don't believe that this revelation gives Ocasio-Cortez the sudden right to identify as Jewish when her family apparently did not know this for generations.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.