\u201cRich people like to live in areas where they can buy the politicians easily \u2014 like Ritchie Torres, who is bought and controlled by Zionist influencers and millionaires, who all live in Riverdale,\u201d Vega said in a recent video.<\/p>\n
The video included photos of Torres meeting with Jewish leaders, with motion graphics highlighting the outline of a kippah on Torres\u2019s head. It has drawn condemnation from Jewish leaders, who accused Vega of using antisemitic tropes.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust because you use the word Zionist instead of Jew doesn\u2019t make it any less antisemitic,\u201d said Eric Dinowitz, Riverdale\u2019s Jewish City Council member. \u201cEspecially in your video when you have little traces around yarmulkes. Like, it is very clearly an anti-Jewish sentiment that is driving his argument.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, principal of the Modern Orthodox day school SAR Academy, called the video \u201cugly, ugly, old-fashioned antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n The video has served as a particularly contentious chapter in a Democratic primary race for Torres\u2019s seat, which has often revolved around the incumbent\u2019s support for Israel \u2014 and which could be a test of how strongly a Democratic primary campaign centered around Israel resonates with voters.<\/p>\n Torres represents New York\u2019s 15th Congressional District, which covers a large part of the Bronx and is one of the poorest districts in the country. And in a moment when many progressives are hoping to take on moderate pro-Israel Democrats, he has made himself an obvious target.<\/p>\n A former City Council member who joined Congress in 2021, Torres is a vocal pro-Israel advocate who\u2019s said<\/a> he always has been and \u201calways will be\u201d a Zionist and has called himself \u201cthe embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive<\/a>.\u201d He\u2019s received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and has been enthusiastically embraced by pro-Israel Jews in his district and across the city.<\/p>\n In December, children from local Jewish schools serenaded him as he received the Shamash Leadership Award from the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, in a ceremony held at SAR.<\/p>\n Pro-Palestinian activists as well as some local constituents, meanwhile, have taken aim<\/a> at Torres\u2019s support for Israel, claiming he\u2019s more focused on foreign policy than his own Bronx district. The Jewish and anti-Zionist podcaster Adam Friedland tore into Torres during an interview last year that went viral.<\/p>\n Torres\u2019s spokesperson has said in statements<\/a> that the congressman is focused on issues such as housing, affordability and standing up to US President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cVoters across the Bronx, no matter their religion, race, or background, trust Ritchie Torres to be their voice in Washington because he is a lifelong resident who delivers real results,\u201d said Torres\u2019s spokesperson, Benny Stanislawski, in a statement. \u201cHe remains focused on the issues that matter most to his community, from public housing to affordability, while forcefully pushing back against the harmful attacks coming from the Trump administration, whether they be ICE\u2019s abuses or repeated cuts to the social safety net.\u201d<\/p>\n Stanislawski continued, \u201cEfforts to divide the Bronx and pit communities against one another will fail, because this borough knows who is fighting for them and who is simply desperately chasing relevance.\u201d<\/p>\n But with a primary coming up in June, some of his challengers \u2014 and many of New York City\u2019s progressive voters, who recently elected an anti-Zionist mayor in Zohran Mamdani \u2014 are hoping that Torres\u2019s support for Israel will work against him. It is the first time Torres has faced a primary challenge since taking office.<\/p>\n The three-term congressman\u2019s challengers include Michael Blake, the former State Assembly member who recently ran an unsuccessful mayoral campaign; Vega, a 26-year-old political organizer from the LaRouche movement, which has been described as conspiracy-driven<\/a> and \u201ccultlike\u201d<\/a>; Dalourny Nemorin, a public defender and Democratic Socialists of America organizer; and TikTok musician Jon LaTona.<\/p>\n Andre Easton, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is running as an independent in November\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n \t The only challenger with a record of supporting Israel, State Assembly member Amanda Septimo, suspended her campaign soon after launching it, citing a recent lupus diagnosis.<\/p>\n Blake, who lost the primary against Torres for the same district in 2020, has made Torres\u2019s donations from AIPAC his focal point.<\/p>\n A former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, Blake said in a phone interview that Democrats, and \u201cespecially a true progressive Democrat, should be opposed\u201d to positions that AIPAC espouses, such as that the United States should provide military aid to Israel.<\/p>\n Blake kicked off his campaign with an endorsement from former mayor Bill de Blasio, and a launch video slamming Torres for taking donations from AIPAC.<\/p>\n The video drew allegations<\/a> of fanning the flames of antisemitism, in part because it featured Guy Christensen, an influencer who justified the killing of two Israeli embassy workers near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, last year. Blake has said<\/a> that including Christensen in the video was \u201ca miss\u201d; his campaign has since taken down the original video and reposted a new version that does not feature Christensen.<\/p>\n Skeptics pointed out that Blake himself had previously spoken at AIPAC events and attended a trip to Israel that it ran. But he has since spoken out against the organization and scrubbed posts from his social media profiles, while sharply criticizing Israel for committing a \u201cgenocide.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake\u2019s change of heart was convincing enough to earn him praise from Track AIPAC, the X account with more than 400,000 followers that works \u201cto end AIPAC and the Israel lobby\u2019s stranglehold on American Democracy\u201d by documenting politicians\u2019 campaign donation numbers from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups.<\/p>\n \u201cAIPAC\u2019s Rep. Ritchie Torres has a serious, anti-genocide, anti-apartheid primary challenger in #NY15!\u201d the account posted<\/a>. \u201c@MrMikeBlake is taking a courageous stand against Israel lobby corruption!\u201d<\/p>\n \t Included in Blake\u2019s launch video was a clip of Mamdani praising Blake; the two cross-endorsed each other toward the end of the mayoral Democratic primary, in which Blake finished eighth.<\/p>\n Mamdani, whose endorsement could boost a candidate\u2019s profile among progressives, has not weighed in on the 15th district race \u2014 and until recently, Blake wasn\u2019t the only candidate showcasing his relationship with the new mayor.<\/p>\n Septimo, who was elected to a second term in the State Assembly in 2024, told Politico that Mamdani<\/a>, a former colleague in Albany, is \u201csupportive of me and my efforts to deepen my work and the reach of my work.\u201d During last year\u2019s mayoral election, the New York Times wrote<\/a> that Septimo was part of Mamdani\u2019s inner circle and \u201cbrain trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Blake \u2014 and unlike Mamdani himself \u2014 Septimo is a longtime supporter of Israel. She strongly opposed<\/a> Mamdani\u2019s failed \u201cNot On Our Dime\u201d legislation, which was aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. She also went on an AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel in 2016 and visited again<\/a> following the bloody Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre.<\/p>\n Septimo had said<\/a> her campaign would focus on \u201ccentering people in the Bronx and what they\u2019re facing on a daily basis,\u201d rather than international issues. But she suspended her bid last week when she revealed that she had been diagnosed with lupus.<\/p>\n By keeping international issues in the background, Septimo had taken a starkly different approach from Blake\u2019s anti-AIPAC campaign \u2014\u00a0a move that might be more resonant with voters in the district, according to a political strategist.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if this is a winning approach for Michael Blake,\u201d said Democratic strategist Trip Yang. \u201cRitchie Torres is a fairly well-liked incumbent in his district, and he has over $14 million in the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Yang added that it was affordability, and not Israel-Gaza politics, that fueled Mamdani\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n Ross Barkan, a journalist and one-time State Senate candidate, said he doesn\u2019t see Israel as being central to Bronx voters\u2019 priorities in the way that it might be in more heavily Jewish districts, such as the 10th Congressional District race between Rep. Dan Goldman and Brad Lander.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just not a place where that many voters are emotionally tied to Israel,\u201d Barkan said of the 15th district. \u201cSo whether you\u2019re for Palestinian rights or for Israel, it might not resonate much either way.\u201d<\/p>\n That characterization would be news to Jews living in Riverdale, one of the most Jewish neighborhoods in the city, where Israeli flags hang on front lawns and synagogues and Ha-Makolet: Shoshi\u2019s Market carries a wide range of Israeli products. The neighborhood is home not only to SAR but to a nondenominational day school, Kinneret, whose founders in 1947 included the Zionist leader Golda Meir \u2014 and whose portrait hangs in the hallway.<\/p>\n According to a 2023 UJA-Federation of New York community study<\/a>, there are 16,000 Jewish adults and 4,000 Jewish children living in Riverdale and the adjacent Kingsbridge neighborhood. Jews are a small minority across the Bronx, though, with an estimated population of 29,000 in the borough of 1.4 million, approximately half of whom live in the 15th district<\/a>.<\/p>\n Torres was already popular in the district before Riverdale was added in 2022. But the neighborhood has a special bond with him.<\/p>\n \t \u201cAs Jews in this community, we obviously support Ritchie, and would love that the vote gets out for him,\u201d said Michael Brown, a Jewish Riverdale resident, in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s not just his support for Jews, but he\u2019s been good for his whole constituency.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown said his daughter attends SAR, where Torres has been a frequent guest. \u201cI know, as a congressman, I\u2019m not supposed to have favorites \u2014 but SAR is one of my favorites because it is a special and magical place,\u201d Torres told the entire student body during a December 2023 visit, a day after he was heckled for his Israel views on the Upper East Side.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually gave him a report card last year because he spent so much time here,\u201d joked Krauss, the principal. Krauss said he\u2019s been to Israel with Torres twice, including a 2024 trip with a group of Bronx leaders<\/a> during which they met with Yoav Gallant, then the defense minister.<\/p>\n Torres has consistently voted<\/a> on pro-Israel positions<\/a> in Congress, and in January 2024, he left the Congressional Progressive Caucus as his identification with Israel made him increasingly an outlier on the left.<\/p>\n Dinowitz, who represents Riverdale, Kingsbridge and a few adjacent Bronx neighborhoods, is the chair of the City Council\u2019s Jewish Caucus, and left the Progressive Caucus in February 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cWith someone like Ritchie in Congress, a lot of us do feel safer, knowing that someone\u2019s not going to shy away from their support of the Jewish community because it may be politically convenient at this time or that time,\u201d Dinowitz said.<\/p>\n Thomas Gardner, the senior rabbi of the Reform synagogue Riverdale Temple, said everyone he\u2019s spoken with has \u201cbeen very positive about Ritchie Torres.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Gardner said Torres told him that the most frequent complaint he hears walking around the district is that he supports Israel despite the war in Gaza. Gardner pointed to Torres\u2019s criticism of Netanyahu \u2014 that Netanyahu has done \u201cirreparable damage<\/a>\u201d to Israel\u2019s support among Democrats \u2014 as a sign of his alignment with a number of constituents.<\/p>\n \u201cMy personal feeling is that his statements were very much along the lines of what most of my congregants think,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cThey\u2019re very pro-Israel, but they\u2019re not pro-Netanyahu. They believe in Israel and hope that it is strong and exists. But they also hope that the Palestinians don\u2019t suffer. Palestinians need better leadership. The Palestinians need peace.\u201d<\/p>\n For many of Torres\u2019s critics, simply being anti-Netanyahu falls short of the mark.<\/p>\n Jose Vega is taking a Michael Blake-like approach to capture those critics\u2019 attention, having launched his campaign at a town hall <\/a>called \u201cThe Bronx is \u2018Gaza West\u2019: Rebuilding Starts Here \u2014 and There.\u201d<\/p>\n Vega is part of the LaRouche movement, which follows the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, who reportedly said<\/a> that only 1.5 million Jews died in the Holocaust, and that the Ku Klux Klan was founded on behalf of B\u2019nai B\u2019rith<\/a>. Vega has made a point of centering Torres\u2019s views on Israel, and even confronted him in a Bronx restaurant about them.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are responsible for the death of thousands of Palestinian children, thousands of Ukrainian children \u2014 you love funding war,\u201d Vega declared in a video that he took <\/a>of the confrontation.<\/p>\n Vega posted another video on X of a billboard in the Bronx that featured a photo of Torres and the message, \u201cFor every Palestinian child that\u2019s murdered\u2026 your Congressman, Ritchie Torres, gains a profit. Let the Palestinian children live.\u201d<\/p>\n Vega said the video was sent to him by a \u201cTorres hater,\u201d though JNS reported that the billboard\u2019s message may have been AI-generated. (Torres called the message \u201clies and libels that are meant to incite political violence,\u201d in a statement<\/a>.)<\/p>\n A couple of weeks later, Vega appeared on a video podcast called the Jimmy Dore Show, and said<\/a> with a smile that he \u201cwill not confirm or deny\u201d whether he, in fact, took the video himself, though he did firmly state that \u201cit\u2019s not artificial intelligence, because I hate AI.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Vega was endorsed by the Anti-Zionist America PAC, a non-partisan group that has endorsed a range of candidates, including Democrats, Libertarian independents and America First Republicans, calling for mass deportations on the basis of their anti-Israel views.<\/p>\n His recent remarks about Riverdale Zionists controlling Torres and the district, which came during an interview with anti-Israel influencer Erik Warsaw, drew strong reactions from Jewish leaders such as Krauss, who said he was \u201csickened,\u201d and Dinowitz, who called the video \u201cfrightening.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, he wasn\u2019t even trying to hide his antisemitism,\u201d Dinowitz said.<\/p>\n There is no polling data yet for the race, and Vega, whose campaign has received about $101,000<\/a>, is the only challenger to have reported receipts to the Federal Election Commission. Torres, meanwhile, has $14.3 million in cash on hand, rolled over from previous elections.<\/p>\n Dalourny Nemorin, a public defense attorney and DSA organizer, is running on domestic issues like housing, healthcare and immigrants\u2019 rights, though she also criticized Torres for his AIPAC support in an interview with the Bronx Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n His funding from AIPAC and pro-Israel views, she said in November, have led him to \u201cdeny the existence of genocide in Palestine, while we watch in real time as people starve to death.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked by a Reddit user<\/a> why her campaign site doesn\u2019t emphasize her position on taking AIPAC money, Nemorin said she \u201cwanted to highlight the issues Ritchie was ignoring and not further platform they [sic] people who keeps him preoccupied.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, music TikToker Jon LaTona has said little about his candidacy. He has worn what appears to be a keffiyeh in unrelated videos<\/a>, indicating an opposition to Torres\u2019s pro-Israel stance, though the TikTok account<\/a> for his campaign has been taken down.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/WhatsApp-Image-2024-04-01-at-18.58.34-e1711987881104-640x400.jpeg\")
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\n\t\tUS Congressman Ritchie Torres meets with Daniel Lishitz, whose grandfather Oded Lifshitz was then being held hostage in Gaza, in Tel Aviv\u2019s Hostages Square, March 31, 2024. Lifshitz was killed in captivity and his body returned to Israel as part of an exchange in February 2025. (Hostages and Missing Families Forum)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2217998089-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tMichael Blake speaks during a debate between Democratic mayoral primary candidates, June 4, 2025, New York, New York. (Yuki Iwamura-Pool\/Getty Images\/ via JTA)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/04-07-2024-Torres-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tUS Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, at a house in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel, March 31, 2024. (Gabriel Sod, Courtesy of UJA-Federation)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_5664-640x400.jpeg\")
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\n\t\tFrom left to right: Congressman Ritchie Torres, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss and Israeli Consul General Aviv Ezra take questions from a group of SAR Academy students, December 22, 2023. (Julia Gergely\/ JTA)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_3037-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIn a ceremony at SAR Academy, Ritchie Torres receives the JCRC\u2019s annual Shamash Leadership Award for his \u2018continued allyship with New York\u2019s Jewish community.\u2019 (Courtesy JCRC via JTA)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Untitled-2-2-640x400.jpg\")
\n\t\t15th Congressional District candidate Jose Vega appears on The Jimmy Dore Show, January 2026. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n