(VINnews) Pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres (Dem.) won reelection to his U.S. House seat in New York on Tuesday, November 5.
Torres won more than 77% of the votes, defeating Republican Gonzalo Duran and independent Jose Vega.
Torres has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout the war against Hamas, visiting several times to identify with and express his support despite suffering harsh criticism from Democrats for his positions.
Torres said the state of public discourse on Israel—where he encounters “nothing but criticism, hyperbolic and hysterical demonization of Israel, on social media and in the mainstream media”—cows his fellow progressives into silence.
“There’s no issue on which I get more hate, harassment and death threats than on the subject of Israel,” he said. “My office has been flooded with hate calls. There’s a concerted effort to intimidate elected officials like me from supporting Israel. And there are elected officials who allow themselves to be browbeaten into silence and submission.”
In August, Torres noted that Israel’s critics continue to criticize it even when it does what they previously said they wanted, following the eliminations of Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
“I am old enough to remember the international community pressuring Israel to pursue a ‘surgical’ approach to rooting out Hamas—the very thing for which Israel is now being condemned by the international community. What can be less indiscriminate and more targeted than surgically removing the leader of the terrorist organization that orchestrated October 7?” Torres wrote on X.
“Israel is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t,” he said.
In September, Torres was accosted by an anti-Israel activist at a climate conference, who accused him of “obliterating” the Palestinian Arab people and land.
In a video posted to social media, the activist approached Torres and demanded, “How can you be at a climate summit when you continue to obliterate not only the people of Palestine but the land?”
Torres responded, “The greatest threat to our country are useful idiots like you.”
Last month, he denounced Harvard University’s handling of antisemitism on its campus and noted “it has no one to blame but itself,” after Harvard University President Alan Garber expressed disappointment with the university’s fundraising efforts.
