Ritchie Torres

FACT: The annual funding Israel receives from the US amounts to less than one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget. Less than 1/10th of 1%. FACT: That annual funding would cover only a few hours of federal health care spending. A few hours. Yet politicians who specialize in scapegoating would have you believe that Israel is responsible for America’s affordability crisis. Like every form of scapegoating before it, it is a dangerous lie.

My speech at a 10/7 vigil in the Bronx: Three years ago, October 7th—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust—cruelly coincided with Simchat Torah. What should have been a day of joy became one of overwhelming grief, shock, and trauma. On that day, Jews throughout the world were robbed of the joy of Simchat Torah. When I led a Bronx delegation to Israel for the first time since October 7th, I will never forget the experience of meeting the survivors of the Nova massacre and finding myself inspired by their resilience, by their insistence on defying despair itself, by the message: “We will dance again.” Those words remind us that the joy of Simchat Torah can never be surrendered to terror. It must be reclaimed. The most powerful antidote to antisemitism is to be joyfully Jewish. Franklin Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Jewish identity is a beautiful gift. It is not something to be hidden out of fear. It is something to be openly celebrated with joy. With pride. With passion. And with love. The purpose of terrorism is to strike terror into the heart of a people. The Jewish people and their allies must never stop dancing, never stop singing, and never stop living. Because the moment we stop, terror has won. And terror can never have the final word on the fate of either the Jewish people or the Jewish State. So I have a simple call to action: Never give up. Never give in. Never stop singing. Never stop dancing. Relentlessly rejoice in your Judaism. Am Yisrael Chai.

The world demonizes Israel 365 days a year. Perhaps, for just one day—October 7th—the critics of Israel could take a vacation from their hysterical hatred of the world’s only Jewish State and find it within themselves to express condolences for the thousands of Israelis murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and abducted at the hands of Hamas.

It is one thing to merely see oneself as a victim. It is another to objectively be a victim. Israelis were objectively victims of October 7th—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Any suggestion to the contrary is anti-Israel activism camouflaged as journalism.

The extremes of American politics love to blame Jews for antisemitism rather than the antisemites themselves. Let me put it plainly: there is absolutely no justification for antisemitism. There never has been, and there never will be. No amount of victim-blaming or gaslighting by Hasan Piker can shift moral responsibility away from where it belongs: the antisemites who commit acts of violence and terror against Jews.

The most extreme expression of unrepentant antisemitism in American politics is Dan Bilzerian, who has drawn far less public opprobrium than he deserves. Discarding the usual code words such as “Zionists,” Bilzerian scapegoats Jews by name, openly declaring: “It is not red against blue. It is us against Jew.” When he is not trafficking in Holocaust denial, he releases AI-generated campaign videos suggesting that our view of Hitler—whom he whitewashes as an “Austrian painter”—should be “revisited.” What distinguishes Dan Bilzerian from others who share his pathological preoccupation with the Jewish people and the Jewish state? His conspiratorial Jew-hatred is unfiltered by euphemism. He makes no attempt to hide it. He flaunts it. For he is proud of it. The rest of us should be ashamed.

A violent agitator disrupted Shabbat services at Central Synagogue, assaulting a congregant and a security guard. Just as troubling as the violence itself is the political climate that emboldens it. American politics has become so obsessively antagonistic toward “Zionists” that even a synagogue is seen as fair game for disruption and desecration. No Jewish space is considered sacred enough to be left untouched. Antisemitism has risen to historic highs in America’s most Jewish city, with more hate crimes against Jews than against all other communities combined. Instead of cooling tensions, both the far left and the far right keep pouring gasoline on the fires of hate, fear, and blame.