MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS FEBRUARY 22 2023
Truth and the Leftwing agenda rarely have much interaction. This is why when leftist activists are confronted by the truth, they are so shocked and appalled that they must resort to childish name-calling in order to convince the masses that they are on the righteous side, not necessarily the side that exists in reality. So when it does happen that a Leftist says something true, it should be noted.
One such occasion was seen in a viral video featuring Bronx Representative Ritchie Torres. Torres is as far left as any member of the Squad, although he is not a member of it. In terms of social justice, single-payer healthcare, defunding the police, climate activism, and LGBT issues, he’s right in line with his fellow New Yorkers Jamaal Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley.
What sets him apart from that group is that he does not publicly embrace the lies told about the Jewish State – nor did he demure when confronted about it. At a town hall event, Torres was called an “Israel lobby plant” and was asked about “ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinians.” Torres disproved that notion with a simple question to the group. “Can we all agree that when there’s ethnic cleansing or genocide, there tends to be depopulation?” Then he states obvious facts about the population growth of the Palestinian community over the past 50 years, clearly debunking that lie.
Torres goes further when asked to defend his support for the Iron Dome. “Iron Dome is defensive, not offensive technology,” he said. “I will not apologize for supporting technology that protects civilians from rocket fire. That is a position that I proudly take.”
This video went around Jewish Twitter, with Jewish columnists for Newsweek, the New York Post, Forward, and AIPAC all heaping praise on Torres. It would not be surprising if a “non-partisan” or “bi-partisan” group that supports Israel (like AIPAC) to highlight Torres as a shining example of what a Member of Congress should say with regards to Israel.
Credit where it’s due, Torres did say and do the right thing when confronted, especially since it would be so easy for him to fall in line with those he is ideologically connected to in the Democratic Party, those with whom he agrees with 99% of the time. At the same time, we should recognize that this support is the most basic and fundamentally obvious statement that one could make about Israel. This is the lowest common denominator in terms of support for the Jewish state. Proclaiming that Israel is not committing genocide and that funding the Iron Dome is a good thing should be (and is) a no-brainer for nearly all of Congress. It’s a testament to the insanity that has gripped the Democratic Party that this video is anything more than a display of boorish behavior by a few members of the audience.
In case everyone forgets how close the Democrats came to being overrun with Jew-haters and Israel-haters, lets dial back to 2020, when the Democratic Party was kneeling with Kente cloth in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which explicitly wrote in its original 2016 platform a section on international solidarity that expressed support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom, stating that “The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” The platform also called for an end to US military aid to Israel. The Democrats have welcomed with open arms members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who voted in 2017 to support the BDS movement and chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” when they did so. The Democratic Party has not yet stepped over the cliff, but they are too close for anyone’s comfort.
The gasps in the audience and the pearl-clutching online gives an insight into the recoil that people have when confronted by facts and logic. This happened on a grander scale when the Left was forced to reckon with a more well-known and long-lasting supporter of its favorite lies: The New York Times. In a letter signed by 200 contributors to TheTimes, activists took issue with The Times writing several stories questioning the medical transitioning of minors. This is a cause embraced by nearly every Democrat, including Joe Biden during his State of the Union address. The Timeshad the audacity to question the idea of using hormone blockers or radical surgery to convince a teenage girl that she is actually a boy (or vice versa) and the Left went insane.
“The Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language,” says the people who think that reconstructive surgery changes gender and calls anyone who disagrees a genocidal bigot who wants to destroy the existence of a “marginalized” community. The Times, to their credit, is standing firm in their reporting. Yet much like a baseball manager coming out to talk to the umpire, the goal isn’t always to change the last call, but to make sure the next questionable call goes your way. The bare minimum for The Times to do is question the notion that its mentally and physically necessary to “affirm” gender (that means telling a kid that their gender is the opposite of what it is), and the Left recoils at that.
Good for Torres and The New York Times for showing some backbone to the craziest on their side, but no one should fool themselves into thinking that this is the last that will be said on the matter. When anyone who is of the Left starts to feel the pressure of their own extreme wing bearing down on them, they could cave at any point. It’s incumbent on the rest of us to note when they do good, but also be wary of relying on them continuing to do so for very long.
