Rep. Ritchie Torres blasts squad members Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush ‘glorifying’ Hamas’ deadliest attack against Israel that has so far killed more than 700
Liberal Democrat Ritchie Torres targeted two members of the team for voicing support for terrorists amid the deadliest attacks against Israel in history.
The South Bronx congressman called Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib’s comments ‘reprehensible and repulsive.’
As of Monday, Israel’s troops were still fighting to retake its own towns from Hamas gunmen, admitting the battle was taking longer than expected more than two days after the militants burst over the fence from Gaza on a deadly rampage.
Fighting continued to rage in seven or eight locations in Israel captured by the fighters, who killed 700 Israelis and took dozens of hostages.
Rep. In a statement, Tlaib referred to Israel as an ‘apartheid government’ which is responsible for the ‘suffering’ caused by the attacks. In the same statement, Tlaib referred to Hamas as the ‘resistance’. Both representatives called on the Biden administration to stop supporting Israel.
“I mourn the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today and every day. As always, I am determined to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights and human dignity.’
Liberal Congressman Ritchie Torres called the messages of support from his fellow Democrats for Hamas “reprehensible.”
In a statement Rep. Rashida Tlaib refers to Israel as an ‘apartheid government’ which is responsible for the ‘suffering’ that the attacks have caused. This was followed by a similar statement from Rep. Corey Bush
“The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance,” Tlaib said in her statement.
Rep. Cori Bush later released a similar statement.
Meanwhile, Rep. Torres in a statement to the Jewish Insider struck a different chord compared to his other liberals. “US aid to Israel is and should be unconditional, and never more so than in this moment of critical need. Congress must act decisively to provide Israel with everything it needs to defend itself against unprecedented terrorism.’
‘Shame on anyone who glorifies the largest single-day mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust as ‘resistance’. It is reprehensible and repulsive.’
Torres (35) was elected to represent New York’s 15th congressional district in 2020. In 2019, he called himself “the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive.”
In other messages on X, Torres slammed the media for seemingly normalizing Hamas’ actions.
‘If you kill, injure, rape and kidnap civilians and children, as Hamas has done, you are not a militant. You are a terrorist. The media should stop sanitizing terrorists as ‘militants’, he wrote on Saturday.
‘Hamas’ surprise terror attack by air, land and sea is Israel’s 9/11. Losing 600 Israelis is equivalent to losing about 20,000 Americans,’ he wrote the next day.
In other messages on X, Torres slammed the media for seemingly normalizing Hamas’ actions
Torres was also critical of the New York Democratic Socialists of America protest Sunday in Times Square.
‘The DSA held a hate rally and chanted: ‘from the river to the sea’, which is code for wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Let it sink in. The DSA calls for the destruction of the Jewish State in the midst of the largest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.’
‘When it comes to the slaughter and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and children, the DSA leadership has no shame. No decency. No humanity. Just hate. I have been warning for years about the deep rot of antisemitism at the core of the DSA and its enablers. There is no more denial,’ he added.
Earlier this weekend, fellow group member Rep. Ilhan Omar shockingly called for international protection and support for Palestinians after their fundamentalist terrorist group Hamas carried out a brutal terrorist attack on Israel.
The progressive congresswoman from Minnesota expressed her condolences to the people of the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip amid widespread criticism of her and her colleagues’ response to the violence.
“Reminder, Gaza has no shelters or an iron dome and please pray for them,” Omar wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “May peace reign in the region and we move towards a moral awakening to care about the human suffering we see.”
“Palestinians are a people under siege who deserve protection from the international community,” she added.
Rep. Ilhan Omar called for ‘international’ protection in Gaza after the Palestinian terror group Hamas launched surprise multi-front attacks in Israel on Saturday.
Omar (right) was one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018, and she was joined by Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (pictured left), who has remained remarkably quiet about the recent terrorist attacks
The shocking images of the bodies of hundreds of Israeli civilians strewn across the streets of towns, gunned down at an outdoor discotheque and kidnapped from their homes were like nothing seen before in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel responded with its heaviest-ever bombardment of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 400 people, and may be considering an unprecedented ground assault on the territory it abandoned nearly two decades ago. First, it must restore control over its own territory.
Fighter jets, helicopters and artillery struck more than 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip overnight, with targets including Hamas and Islamic Jihad command centers and the residence of a senior Hamas official, Ruhi Mashtaa.
“The price the Gaza Strip will pay will be a very heavy one that will change reality for generations,” said Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Ofakim, one of the towns finally recaptured after a battle with Hamas fighters who stormed through it and shot dead. civilians and leave with hostages.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s options to hit Hamas, which controls the narrow Gaza Strip that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians, may be limited by concerns about the many Israelis seized in the raid. A full-scale invasion of Gaza, which Netanyahu has avoided in his long years in power, could endanger the lives of the hostages.
In a statement, the Israeli Air Force said it had dropped about 2,000 munitions and more than 1,000 tons of bombs on Gaza targeting more than 8,000 targets in Gaza in the past 20 hours. Among the targets were three rocket launchers aimed at Israel, a mosque where militants operated and 21 high-rise buildings that served militant activities.
Since Saturday, at least 436 people have been killed, including 91 children and 61 women, and more than 2,270 people have been wounded, the health ministry in Gaza said.
“The Zionist enemy’s military targeting and bombing of houses inhabited by women and children, mosques and schools in Gaza amounts to war crimes and terrorism,” Hamas official Izzat Reshiq said in a statement.