Rep. Richie Torres said Monday that Hamas feels “emboldened” by anti-Israel protests and the “demonization” of the Jewish state, after the terror group rejected the latest cease-fire proposal. Stated.
“The hyperbolic and hysterical demonization of Israel by our fair-weather friends has emboldened Hamas to continue to reject the ceasefire and continue to hold hostages captive,” Torres wrote in X.
Torres made the comments after reports revealed that senior Hamas officials had turned down recent bids for peacekeeping missions.
“We reject the latest Israeli proposal informed by the Egyptian side. The Politburo met today and decided on this,” Hamas’s foreign affairs chief Ali Baraka told Reuters.
Another Hamas official, who declined to be named, told the publication: “There is no change in the occupation’s position.” [Israel] “Therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” he said, adding, “There has been no progress yet.”
Torres’ online rant comes as no surprise after the Bronx Democratic Party withdrew from the Congressional Progressive Caucus over its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
In November, the full House moved to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), vice chair of the Progressive Caucus, for making abusive comments about Israel.
Meanwhile, another vice chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), called Israel a “racist state” and later apologized.
Meanwhile, Torres has been a vocal supporter of the Jewish state following Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked war.
In January, Mr. Torres sent a scathing letter to Karen Dye, chairman of the Goldman Sachs Charitable Foundation. She learned that the charity acted as an intermediary to funnel “millions” of people to the People’s Forum, an anti-Israel organization linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
Hamas “espouses a genocidal ideology of the kind that the People’s Forum has been caught promoting as a ‘final blow’, which bears a striking resemblance to Nazi rhetoric about the ‘Final Solution,'” he said. wrote.
Torres also spoke out against the infiltration of “anti-Israel propaganda” into New York City public school classrooms, saying: “The DOE should be subject to increased scrutiny of its educational content from outside groups like the Qatar International Foundation, which had programs promoting a medieval image.” In the East, Israel was nowhere to be found. David・Prime Minister Banks wrote.
A Bronx borough councilman’s outspoken comments led to anti-Israel vandals leaving a “bloody” doll outside his borough hall on Christmas Day.
Hamas has arrested 253 people in attacks in southern Israel.
The Wall Street Journal, citing Israeli officials, reported that as of the end of March, 129 hostages from October 7 were still believed to be in Gaza.
Of these, at least 34 and as many as 50 are believed to have died in captivity.
