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Rep. Ritchie Torres said Monday that Hamas feels ‘emboldened’ by anti-Israel protests and the ‘demonization’ of the Jewish state after the terrorist group rejected the latest ceasefire proposal.
“The hyperbolic and hysterical demonization of Israel—from fair-weather friends—makes Hamas feel emboldened to continue rejecting ceasefires and continue holding the hostages captive,” Torres wrote on X.
Torres commented after reports revealed senior Hamas officials had turned down the latest bid for peacekeeping efforts.
“We reject the latest Israeli proposals that the Egyptian side informed us of. The politburo met today and decided this,” Ali Baraka, who is responsible for Hamas’s foreign relations, told Reuters.
Another Hamas official, who was not identified, told the publication “there is no change in the position of the occupation [Israel] and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” and that “there is no progress yet.”
Torres’ online barb comes as no surprise after the Bronx Democrat quit the Congressional Progressive Caucus over its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
The full House moved to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Progressive Caucus vice chair, in November for vitriol she’d spread about Israel.
While another vice chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called Israel a “racist state” and later apologized.
Torres, meanwhile, has vocally supported the Jewish state in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 surprise attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing war.
In January, 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,” he wrote Chancellor David Banks.
The Bronx congressman’s outspokenness has previously led anti-Israel vandals to leave a “bloody” doll outside his district office on Christmas Day.
Hamas seized 253 people during their attack in southern Israel.
As of late March, 129 Oct. 7 hostages were still believed to be in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Israeli officials.
Of that number, at least 34 and as many as 50 are believed to have died in captivity.