AOC is Wrong About New York and Wrong About its Jews

At a recent Zohran Mamdani rally, Alexandria Ocasia-Cortex went on a rant about the history of New York's immigrants, exposing that she is wrong about the city's history and its Jewish residents.

The mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani got plenty of attention for his Sunday night rally in New York—and for a good reason. The country needs to meet the man who is poised to destroy its greatest city.

The appearance of his backer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at the same event deserves even more scrutiny. Mamdani is only a local candidate, but she will surely be running for president in the next national election.

Standing in front of two exquisitely tokenizable Sikhs in turbans and jumping with excitement, the AOC gave her unique version of New York City’s history:

This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow. Latinos seeking a better life, Native peoples standing for themselves, Asian Americans coming together in Queens, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Manhattan, in Staten Island, in this country, in a vision to build the freest, toughest, and greatest city on earth.

Some might say that the minority namecheck felt outdated, but I find it offensive. My darling husband tells me that I’m the most thick-skinned person he’s ever met, but there are certain things I won’t let pass. One of them is politicizing the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is something the U.S. Representative from New York doesn’t know very much about. If she did, she’d know that America was not a destination for Jews escaping it—just like it also wasn’t a destination for Italians fleeing fascism—and for similar reasons. The 1924 National Origin Act imposed quotas on the new arrivals, resulting in an 80 percent reduction of immigration. The act ensured that very few Jews fleeing the Third Reich found a home on our shores.

In 1939 the United States—and Canada and Cuba—turned away the SS St. Luis, a German ocean liner carrying 900 passengers, almost all of them Jewish. The rationale given was that they must “wait in line” with other immigrants. The ship sailed back to Europe where some of its passengers were able to find refuge, while others ended up in death camps. I find it odd that an open border progressive like the AOC is not familiar with that episode, especially given that it has been used and abused many times over to argue for increased migrant quotas. So why then drag the Holocaust so wantonly into her speech?

She should at least give credit to Jews for helping to build New York, though, even if it’s inconvenient from her perspective. The first Jewish refugees arrived in New Amsterdam as early as 1654, fleeing not the Holocaust, but the Inquisition. They were Sephardim escaping a Portuguese revolt against the Dutch in Brazil and hoping to find religious freedom in another tolerant Dutch colony. They built the city together with other colonists, most of them Dutch and English, which later became the city of New York in 1664. But to acknowledge this would negate AOC’s narrative about people from all over the world surging to build New York.

Moreover, if the original Jews of the colony were fleeing religious prosecution in Brazil and not white people in Europe, what does this say about Latin America? Perhaps it says that they were haunted by AOC’s ancestors, and if we were to start exploring that history, we may have to acknowledge the existence of antisemitism in the Global South. Moreover, this begs the question as to why we are taking so many migrants from places which are known for their Jew-hatred.

It shouldn’t be controversial to say that the Jewish people made New York into the vibrant city that it now is. They were refugees, too—just not from the Holocaust, unfortunately. The biggest wave came in the last decades of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th, as they were driven out by the murderous antisemitism of the Russian Empire. These individuals followed a smaller wave from Central Europe who arrived a few decades prior—who were also fleeing antisemitism and looking for opportunity. This history used to be better understood in the late 20^th century, at a time when Jews had greater clout in this country and their family histories were still of some interest to the general population.

AOC probably picked the example of the scarcely existent Holocaust refugees over the prior pogrom refugees, from whom most American Jews descend, because it sounds recognizable to the contemporary mainstream audiences. But to use the memory of the Holocaust in order to embellish an argument and to advance an agenda is exploitive. Considering another paragraph of her speech, it’s truly revolting.

Specifically, having already roused emotions with her Holocaust reference, the queen bee of Democratic Socialists then went on to suggest in her speech that Jews don’t belong in the category of “humanity.” Of course she did:

To demand ... that we pay to care for our people, instead of the flattening of Palestinians and oppressed people abroad, is not a radical act. It is basic and core humanity.

AOC has been promoting the genocide blood libel against Israel since January 2024, particularly by mainstreaming what is referred to as the starvation hoax. It’s worth mentioning that in 2021, the lawmaker squeezed out a few tears on the floor of Congress when the legislative body voted to partially fund the Iron Dome—the defense system that previously has kept Israel’s children safe from indiscriminately fired rockets that originated from Gaza.

AOC engages in the (unfortunately) popular antizionist practice of using the Holocaust against the Jews. Now she’s outraged about it—dehumanizing the descendants of the survivors, in effect, prepping the ground for another one.

Add to it the idea that the Jews are perusing our money—we know that Democratic Socialists can’t get enough of this type of rhetoric. At the same rally, Bernie Sanders not surprisingly echoed AOC:

Why don’t we have a foreign policy which does not spend billions of dollars on a Netanyahu government starving children in Gaza?

In the end, the idea that New York received the Holocaust refugees is awfully convenient for an antizionist—why would Jews need sovereignty if they can just come live in America? But this requires denying the history of our country, which failed to provide refuge to Jews when they needed it most.

Whether out of malice or stupidity, Ocasio-Cortez is again wrong on the topic of Jews. As someone who is a practicing Jew, she should avoid addressing the subject out of common decency—especially when it comes to our traumas.

Photo Credit- Fox News, The Medium and The Hill.