Thread:

I never really talked about when AOC claimed Sephardic ancestry last year. I have been thinking about it a lot recently, and think that, though a bit late, it is important that I do as a Jew of Hispano-Portuguese Sephardi descent. 1/

Firstly, I am not denying that AOC may very well have Sephardic roots, as many Latinos do. Nonetheless, her using this fact, as a way to validate her criticisms on Israel was highly offensive. 2/

AOC is Puerto Rican. Like the Sephardi Jews who could be her ancestors, mine also arrived at Caribbean islands seeking opportunity and feeling persecution. The thing is, AOC is not Jewish. 4/

While some of her ancestors might have been, they undeniably intermarried and assimilated into the larger society like so many Sephardim did at the time. 5/

My family fought hard so that I could retain the Jewish and Sephardic identity I proudly carry today, more than 500 years after the expulsion from Spain. I grew up with the culture, the languages, the music, the trauma, the antisemitism. She did not. 6/

I should note that many descendants of Sephardi Jews in Latin America have reconnected with their Jewish identity and culture, and have converted back to Judaism. They have formed an important and beautiful part of the tapestry of World Jewry, and collective Jewish history. 7/

AOC holds claims to neither of these experiences, though. Plus, it is quite clear from her rhetoric that her understanding of Judaism and Jewishness is flawed and superficial. 8/

Her capitalization of Sephardi and Jewish identity is no better than a person’s claim to Native American heritage because of having one Native great-grandparent. 9/

Sephardim are already left in the periphery in the larger Jewish narrative. Our culture is disappearing before our eyes. AOC not only disrespectfully infringed on the limited space of a marginalized group, she did so to advance her own political agenda. 10/

She has tokenized the fringe Jewish anti-zionist groups, who in her opinion, are the ones having “real conversations” about antisemitism unlike the 97% of other Jews, including myself, who apparently are just crying wolf. 11/

Then, she talked about Latin American and Sephardi Jews, and her possible heritage, as a way to criticize Israeli society and politics. AOC talked about Latin American Jews as if her “criticisms of Israel” are helping us... 12/

...when she clearly knows absolutely NOTHING about us and who we are. She has talked about Caribbean Sephardi Jews as these folkloric figures who then just melted away into a distant memory.

Guess what, though, I’M STILL HERE. I am a Sephardi Latino Jew. 13/

AOC can have whatever opinions she wants and say whatever she pleases, but what she cannot do is disingenuously use me and my identity to advance her agenda and undermine my community. AOC does not speak for me. 14/

Also she 100% enables antisemitism, sorry to those to whom this is hard to hear. End/