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Ritchie Torres an Unheard-Of First in Congress

Nov 19, 2020 6:00 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald 31 Comments

Ritchie Torres has just been elected to the House of Representatives from the 15th Congressional District in the South Bronx. All the stories about him focus on his racial make-up (black and Latino), and on his “sexual orientation” (homosexual), as it is demurely called, which together provide the label affixed to Torres. He will be, we read and hear endlessly, the “first openly gay black” member of Congress. Sometimes, more accurately, he will be described as “along with Mondaire Jones one of the two openly gay black members of Congress.“

But that’s not what is most remarkable about Ritchie Torres. It is something else about him that makes him unique and valuable: he is a self-described “progressive” – a word that makes one nervous — but also firmly pro-Israel, which makes him an odd man out with such “progressives’ as the socialist and anti-Israel Bernie Sanders, and the four members of “the Squad” — the ferociously anti-Israel and pro-Muslim Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the less ferociously anti-Israel Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Presley, not quite as reflexively anti-Israel as the other three. The story of Ritchie Torres is here: “Pro-Israel Progressive Ritchie Torres Elected to Congress From District Next to AOC’s,” by Benjamin Kerstein, Algemeiner, November 4, 2020:

Strongly pro-Israel progressive Ritchie Torres of the Bronx will be among the new members of Congress this January, following his electoral victory on Tuesday.

The 32-year-old New York City Council member easily won his race in the 15th Congressional District, making him the first openly-gay black or Latino man to be elected to Congress.

Torres’ district is located next to that represented by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose record on Israel-related issues is generally viewed as hostile, but Torres is very much a supporter of the Jewish state.

In an interview with Jewish Insider last year, Torres said he was pro-Israel “not despite my progressive values, but because of my progressive values.”

Addressing the issue of the BDS movement, Torres said, “The attempt to delegitimize Israel, the attempt to question Israel’s right to exist or right to defend itself, that, to me, crosses the line to destructive criticism.”

“I consider anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism, and I am not going to give consideration to antisemitic voices, voices that are dedicated to delegitimizing Israel as a Jewish state,” he added.

“The notion that you cannot be both progressive and pro-Israel is a vicious lie, because I am the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive,” Torres asserted….

Ritchie Torres expounded at greater length on his support for Israel in an interview he gave last year: “Ritchie Torres: ‘I am the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive,’” by Jacob Kornbluh, Jewish Insider, December 5, 2019

Pushback: When Torres visited Israel in 2015 [the first of several visits], far-left activists helda protest outside City Hall. “At the time I was instinctively pro-Israel — because it has democratic values and institutions — but I had no deep knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no deep knowledge of intersectionality, or of BDS. But when I announced that I was going on a delegation to Israel, I became a target of vitriolic protest,” he recalled. “I had activists from Jewish Voice for Peace accusing me of pinkwashing, accusing me of aiding and abetting apartheid. I even remember coming across an activist with a shirt that read ‘queers for Palestine.’ I remember telling the activist, ‘Does the opposite exist, are there Palestinians for queers?’ It was partly a joke but partly a serious observation. I found it utterly baffling that you had LGBT activists doing the bidding of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization that executes LGBT people. And then I came to realize that the reason is intersectionality, that the BDS movement uses intersectionality to penetrate a whole host of self-proclaimed progressive movements.”

On 2020 candidates expressing support for conditioning aid to Israel: “Support for Israel’s security should remain unconditional. Israel is more than a transactional ally. Israel is a friend, and the notion of threatening a friend with the loss of funding for its security needs strikes me as absurd. In what sense does that honor the very nature of friendship?” Torres further emphasized that while constructive criticism of the Israeli government’s policies is fair game, “rhetoric about conditioning aid to Israel strikes me as a dog whistle for the pro-BDS wing of the progressive movement.”

Face of the party: Torres also pushed back against Republican attempts to use Israel as a political football and paint legislators like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as the face of the Democratic party. “I’m both progressive and pro-Israel,” he stated. “The notion that you cannot be both progressive and pro-Israel is a vicious lie, because I am the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive. I am from the Bronx, I’m Afro-Latino, I’m Puerto Rican, I’m a millennial — but I’m also pro-Israel.”

Command of the hour: “Support for Israel is built on a bedrock of bipartisanship, and that support has never been as threatened existentially as it is now. No matter where you stand ideologically on the spectrum, I think all of us who support Israel should recognize that there needs to be pro-Israel voices in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, in both the progressive and the conservative movements. And so I am deeply committed to not only sustaining but strengthening American support for Israel and strengthening the American-Israeli relationship.”

Torres is clearly articulate and heartfelt in his support for Israel, understands that an end to bipartisan support in Congress for Israel would be dangerous for the Jewish state, and refuses to concede to the anti-Israel Squad its claim of being “the new face of the Democratic Party.” He offers himself as an example of a “pro-Israel progressive,” upsetting the received wisdom that all “progressives” — a highly tendentious word, which carries an automatic and undeserved hint of approval – must perforce be anti-Israel, just like Senators Sanders and Warren, and the much-hyped members of the Squad, whose attitudes and tactics are so disturbing, and whose influence in the Democratic Party needs to be diminished.

Ritchie Torres will prove to be a formidable foe of the Squad as he demonstrates, in his very being, that one can be a so-called “progressive” while remaining as stoutly pro-Israel as anyone could wish. His arrival in Congress can only be salutary and bracing, in helping to clear the air of the noxious anti-Israel fumes spewing from the Squad. He’s one self-styled progressive — are there others? — whose views on Israel’s attempts to survive and thrive in a Muslim sea, one need not deplore.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Israel, New York City Tagged With: Ritchie Torres, South Bronx


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Comments

  1. Keith O says

    Nov 19, 2020 at 6:20 pm

    An interesting mix. A pillow biter who actually thinks.

    Reply
  2. gravenimage says

    Nov 19, 2020 at 6:39 pm

    Ritchie Torres an Unheard-Of First in Congress
    …………..

    Torres’ support of Israel is good to hear. It also makes sense–this is the only nation in the Middle East that supports rights for people of all sexual orientations and freedom in general.

    Reply
    • Infidel says

      Nov 19, 2020 at 7:21 pm

      Ritchie Torres sounds more like the classical left-leaning populist that Dems used to be, back in the 80s. Probably left on things like minimum wages, union rights and so on, but not embracing more recent Leftist woke causes like allegiance to islam, defunding the police, BLM and all the other insane stuff that goes w/ it!

      However, I don’t share Hugh’s ‘optimism’ that he’ll be the new face of the Democrat Party: he’s essentially a pink unicorn w/ gold plated horns. His profile here reminds me more of Tulsi Gabbard, who was once painted as a potential future of the party, but actually went on to be so hated in her party that she couldn’t even run for her own house seat, knowing that she would be primaried. He looks more like a future member of the Walkaway Campaign

      Reply
      • observer says

        Nov 20, 2020 at 6:09 am

        Give the fellow a chance…
        Unfair judgement.

        Reply
        • Infidel says

          Nov 20, 2020 at 9:38 am

          It’s not a reflection on him: it’s a reflection on today’s Democrat Party, which has morphed into the US version of the CPSU

      • gravenimage says

        Nov 20, 2020 at 4:44 pm

        Agree, Infidel.

        Reply
        • Giana Mccarty says

          Nov 20, 2020 at 5:19 pm

          I hope that is a description of him as it is also a description of me.

    • Sam says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 7:16 am

      What about sodom – Gomorrah biblical story?

      Reply
      • Rarely says

        Nov 20, 2020 at 1:41 pm

        Punished for playing Bingo on the Sabbath. What did you think it was all about?

        Reply
    • Barbara Renton says

      Nov 21, 2020 at 2:56 pm

      I quite agree with you. Richie is an important new voice with traditional values and principles. Wishing him all the luck!

      Reply
  3. Cynthia in California says

    Nov 19, 2020 at 8:10 pm

    Thx for clarification on Torres’s stance re. Israel. Each time the “progressive” label is attached to someone in the S.F. Bay Area, s/he turns out to be a BDS supporter or other pro-Hamas (or similar) proponent.

    WTG, Torres. Let’s see what he can convey during his time in the House.

    Reply
  4. Andrew says

    Nov 19, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    It tells me just how confused certain people are these days when you have “queers” against Israel, that has one of THE biggest Gay Parades in the entire World every year, and yet they support Hamas who wants to throw them off the Rooftop….
    A while back a small group in England had a demonstration carrying signs which stated “Gays against sharia” and people started shouting at them calling them racist and fascists, and many of the people shouting were not muslims… Go figure…

    Reply
    • SKA says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 4:57 am

      The progressives just invent these terms like “pink washing” out of thin air and you are instructed to believe that Israel’s equal protection of LGBT people under the law is just more “hasbara” and therefore to be discounted as fact whereas Hamas throwing gays off of high buildings is just an expression of cultural autonomy and liberation which is to be applauded and celebrated.

      Reply
  5. Elizabeth McLean says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 2:24 am

    Time will tell as it has so many times before.

    Reply
  6. Clive Delmonte says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 3:18 am

    More power to you, Mr Torres!

    Reply
  7. HEGEMON says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 3:55 am

    Torres will quickly conform. Didn’t #0BAMAISACANCER proclaim himself the “most pro-Israel president ever”? “Progressives” twist words, create new meanings and flat-out lie. Leftists never really tell you what they really think until they get elected. Don’t expect much from Torres, he’ll suddenly proclaim a NEW understanding of the Palestinian cause and it will be reported as an epiphany by the democrat fellatio media.

    Reply
  8. Sam says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 8:12 am

    All what the commentators on this filthy site care about is how much do people support Israel, even though if the vast majority of the earth population know that isreal is a criminal state.
    Homosexuality is prohibited in the bible.
    You people would love and lust for killing 2 billion Muslims if this will make a Jew happy.

    Reply
    • James Lincoln says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 8:34 am

      Sam,

      If this website is so “filthy”, why are you here?

      Reply
      • Sam says

        Nov 20, 2020 at 9:24 am

        I’m trying to clean it and help the victims like you know truth, not the false and filled with lies propaganda, that’s all.

        Reply
        • Rarely says

          Nov 20, 2020 at 12:08 pm

          Sam.
          What you are and what you are trying to do is clear.
          BTW the only “lust for killing” clearly comes from the muslim camp. Of course the closed and poisoned minds of bigots would find a way to project that “lust” on others.
          If you have evidence then show it but of course you don’t so you can’t.

        • clifford says

          Nov 20, 2020 at 1:24 pm

          you poor ignorant, brain-washed, bigot…Please go somewhere else and tell people like you what the “truth” is.

    • alice w says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 12:02 pm

      You, Sir, probably think all Jews should die?

      Reply
    • Norman Gardner says

      Nov 21, 2020 at 12:11 am

      Israel is a light and benefit to all nations, a leader is science, technology, medicine, agriculture, people of all religions. Only an idiot or bigot would claim otherwise.

      Reply
  9. Giacomo Latta says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 10:18 am

    Does Torres mix with Omar, Tlaib and the like? If so then the brow-beating has already begun.

    Reply
  10. Giana Mccarty says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 11:04 am

    I am definitely a libral although not left enough to be called a progressive. And because of my liberal belief I am very much opposed to Islam and very pro-Israel. Islam* is the most dangerous belief system in the current world for liberal beliefs and very very anti-liberal. Also it is against science and anything that could be considered human progress.

    *Most types of Islam. There are a few small ones that are not dangerous and should be respected as people sincerely trying to survive in a hostal world.

    Reply
    • Giacomo Latta says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 4:35 pm

      What is Islam? Read the koran. I counsel you to do that because I want you to know what tenets all, yes, all, muslims must submit to, not because I want to see you trigger your vomit reflex.

      Reply
      • Giana Mccarty says

        Nov 20, 2020 at 5:16 pm

        I of course have read the Koran, actually 3 different translations with the most recent “Mohammed’s Koran “. It is a book of terror tales. There are some minor sects that are much more tolerant. The main sect of OMAN is an example. Quite different than the other Muslim countries I have visited.

        Reply
        • SemiDave says

          Nov 21, 2020 at 11:38 am

          My question to you is this.
          Even though the minor sects such as the one you mention that happens to appear tolerant, what, under pressure from mainline sects happens in and to small sects when the mainline sects focus the pressure on them?
          I suggest that hey can only comply or be judged as apostate and face the harsh punishment of the warlords of Wahhabism.
          Perhaps you know something that I don’t. However, I do see reports of a lot of muslims murdered along with kafirs who just weren’t muslim enough.

    • gravenimage says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 5:43 pm

      Agree, Giana.

      Reply
  11. Roland says

    Nov 20, 2020 at 1:31 pm

    I wish Ritchie Torres success. He will need all his talent and energy to forge his own path. The loathsome AOC and Muslim cohorts will try to have him ostracized and executed. Torres is being supported by Democratic Majority for Israel, which is “progressive” and credibly pro-Israel.

    Reply
    • gravenimage says

      Nov 20, 2020 at 5:43 pm

      +1

      Reply

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