In quitting the Congressional Progressive Caucus over its stance on the Israel-Hamas war, Bronx Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres is proving himself a truly principled politician.
Much of the left has gone insane, not only slamming Israel for its war of survival but even justifying Hamas’ mass rapes, murders of innocents and hostage-taking.
And the prog establishment is the worst.
The full House censured Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Progressive Caucus vice chair, in November for her hateful lies about Israel. Another vice chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Israel a “racist state” and later apologized.
Torres, meanwhile, has proudly supported the Jewish State as it fights for its survival in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities — and the terrorists’ vows to repeat those horrors as many times as it takes to make Israel unlivable.
He has also denounced the spread of antisemitism on American college campuses, where students and faculty keep defending and even praising Hamas’ barbarism.
Last month, Torres sent a scathing letter to Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund President Karen Dye, after learning the charity acted as a middle man directing “millions” to The People’s Forum, an anti-Israel outfit with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Hamas “espouses the kind of genocidal ideology that The People’s Forum has been caught promoting as ‘the final blow,’ which is strikingly similar to Nazi rhetoric about a ‘final solution,’ ” he wrote.
Torres also spoke out against “anti-Israel propaganda” making its way into New York City public-school classrooms: “The DOE should subject to heightened scrutiny educational content from external entities like the Qatar International Foundation, whose program promoted the image of the Middle East where Israel was nowhere to be found,” Torres wrote Chancellor David Banks last month.
The Bronx congressman’s outspokenness led outrageous anti-Israel vandals to leave a “bloody” doll — “Palestinian child messiah” — outside his district office on Christmas Day.
Nor is Torres the only longtime progressive to break with the hard left since Oct. 7: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has stopped calling himself a “progressive” now that antisemites are so tarnishing the brand.
“There’s only one clear right side and that’s with Israel,” he says.
Like Torres, he’s faced anti-Israel protests at his home and office — which is festooned with posters of Hamas’ hostages.
To be clear: Neither pol has turned into any kind of conservative: They still stand firmly for the economic and cultural positions that used to define progressivism.
But neither is willing to accept the hate that’s become the faction’s line.
We applaud them both.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
