(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.—who has in the past sided with Hamas against Israel (and accused the latter of “ethnic cleansing” for defending itself)—remarkably claimed that she was raised by Jews in a speech Monday night.
“I had a lot of Jewish friends growing up,” she said. “I grew up with great fellowship with the Jewish community.”
Ocasio–Cortez and several other embattled “Squad” members were able to find a group of what they claimed were Jewish rabbis to stand in solidarity with them, less than a week since pro-Hamas Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., was censured by the U.S. House for her anti-Semitic hate speech.
Flanked by members of the group Rabbis for Ceasefire, AOC insisted that the idea of telling Jewish people to turn the other cheek—to lay down their weapons and forget the long-held principle of “an eye for an eye,” as found in Exodus 21:23–27—was, in fact, antithetical to the sacred teachings of Judaism that she had absorbed through osmosis as a child.
“The idea that calling for a ceasefire would somehow be anti-Semitic is actually so upside-down,” she claimed. “It’s actually contrary to the values of this community that helped raise me, frankly.”
In fact, most Jewish rabbis have supported the war and fervently opposed any sort of ceasefire on the part of Israel.
“A ‘humanitarian pause’ would be anything but humanitarian—it would permit Hamas to regroup, rearm, feed their families and their allies, while the physical and emotional torment of the Jewish captives and their families continues unabated,” wrote Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, a representative of more than 2,500 rabbis in support of Israel’s effort, according to the Daily Signal.
Still, that did not stop AOC from appealing to her “Jewish friends”—a trope that leftists themselves often decry as a microaggression or a preface to bigotry when those on the Right invoke their minority friends.
For example, then-CNN host Don Lemon once grilled former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., for saying that some of his best friends were gay, eliciting in response a thousand-word think-piece from the New Republic.
The cliche is so commonly ridiculed that even the New York Times published an op-ed about it 2018—following then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s notorious blackface scandal—claiming “it’s a myth that proximity to blackness immunizes white people from doing racist things.”
But if claiming proximity to a culture is a minor offense, AOC’s actual appropriation of Jewish culture, by insisting she was raised Jewish in order to excuse her anti-Semitic views, is far more egregious an offense.
Ocasio–Cortez initially proclaimed her Jewish heritage in 2018, suggesting that she can trace her Jewish ancestry back to the 15th-century Spain.
“I knew it! I sensed it!” she said at the time, while lighting Hanukkah candles. She said her ancestors “continued to practice their faith, continued to be who they were,” despite pressures from Spanish Catholics to convert or go elsewhere.
Meanwhile, while she was busy stealing other people’s culture, President Joe Biden was stealing hers, declaring himself to be a scrappy Puerto Rican kid from the barrio in one of his many invented narratives.
Biden:
"I got raised in the black church."
"I got my education…in the black church."
"I probably went to shul more than many of you did."
"I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically." pic.twitter.com/wtBhjDdIlM
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 5, 2022
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
