Thank You Congressman Ritchie Torres for Your Unwavering Jewish Support

NEW YORK (VINnews) — Democrat Congressman Ritchie Torres has proven time and again that he is a devoted friend of the Jewish community.

His steadfast support of Israel has been met with adversity and hate from within his own party, yet the congressman remains true to his principles.

In recent weeks, Torres has been repeatedly blasted over his stance on Israel, which is not very popular among many progressives. The Latino Congressman from New York’s 15th district could easily have joined his leftist anti-Israel colleagues who grab every chance to criticize Israel. These views are considered avant-garde and are touted by BDS activists and by other leftist politicians. He would be welcomed and praised as a hero.

New York’s Jewish community stands with @RitchieTorres. Over 1,000 of the Congress Member’s constituents showed up to say:
“Thank you for standing with Israel and against Hamas terror.” https://t.co/zhjZmFeaCl

— David G. Greenfield (@NYCGreenfield) October 24, 2023

Yet Torres has fearlessly and determinedly chosen to stand on principle above politics, and place truth above opportunism, costing him many friends, and possibly even votes.

Since the Hamas terror attack, Torres has been extremely outspoken in support of Israel, and has even confronted members of his own party. He has been the target of immense backlash, condemnation, and personal attacks. He receives threats from his own constituents.

We can only imagine how difficult it must be. Yet he stands by his convictions, and does the right thing, and as such, he deserves immeasurable gratitude on the part of the Jewish community.

Just this past Monday, Torres criticized antisemite Ilhan Omar, his Democrat colleague, for taking positions that “would have led to even more dead Israelis and more dead Palestinians.”

Torres responded to a comment Omar made Friday, when she disgracefully asked him, “How many more killings is enough for you?” regarding his support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

“Is it 1,000 more, 2,000 more, 3,000? How many more Palestinians would make you happy if they died?” she asked at a press conference. “Would you be fine if all of the people of Gaza were gone? Would that make you happy? Would that be the thing that makes you proud? And maybe that’s the question you should ask Ritchie: How many more Palestinian lives is he comfortable with?”

Speaking with CNN’s Dana Bash, Torres said, “I obviously resent those comments. You know, every casualty is a tragedy. Every war is a humanitarian crisis.”

“But we have to keep in mind the causes of the war. Israel did not start the war. The war was imposed upon Israel by the barbaric terrorism of Hamas, which butchered 1,400 Israelis, including babies,” he explained.

When first elected to Congress, Torres visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority, closely investigated the situation and concluded that far from being the aggressor, Israel is under attack from tyrannical, indiscriminate and anti-Semitic enemies who wish to destroy her.

He once wrote the following in an op-ed in the New York Post:

“With sovereignty and security comes the inherent right of self-defense, a right that every state, including our own, takes for granted. Why should Israel be an exception to the rule? Why should Israel be held to a deadly double standard in a moment of terror?

“It is unreasonable to expect a nation state to be the passive target of hundreds of rockets and then forfeit the right to defend itself amid a constant stream of terror. No right-minded person would impose that kind of self-destructive burden on any other country.

And just recently, following the Hamas attack, Torres wrote an op-ed entitled, “Democratic Socialists are ‘indoctrinating’ young Americans with anti-Israel hate in ‘moral monstrosity’”

Here is an excerpt:

The ONLY morally acceptable response to such incomprehensible terror is overwhelming outrage at the boundless barbarism of Hamas.

While most of the civilized world, led by President Biden, rightly recoiled in horror at Hamas and condemned its terrorism immediately and unequivocally, Israel’s ideological enemies here in the US found cause for celebration at the sight of dead Jews.

Imagine, for a moment, the inconsolable grief of a Jewish mother whose baby has been butchered to death. Could you imagine anything more callous and cruel than telling that grieving mother: You had it coming. You and your people brought the terror upon yourselves.

Those were the shocking sentiments of the New York City-Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), which wasted no time in holding a hate rally romanticizing the terrorism of Hamas as “resistance.”

Something is rotten in the state of America. When the institutional leaders in our country cannot condemn the cold-blooded murder of Israeli children and civilians with moral clarity, one must ask: what kind of society are we becoming?

What does the silence and indifference and cowardice — from these so-called leaders — tell us about the depth of anti-Semitism in America and the reckoning required?

The time has come to confront not only the symptoms but the disease: a Democratic Socialist industrial complex that indoctrinates young Americans with an anti-Israel hatred so virulent that it renders them indifferent to the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Anti-Israel extremism, which has been given a veneer of mainstream respectability in law schools and legislatures, is aided and abetted by the sheer spinelessness of so-called “leaders”— from public officials to the presidents of colleges and universities.

Thank you Congressman Torres, for being a true and devoted friend of Am Yisrael.