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Why this congressional candidate is making attacks on AIPAC central to his campaign
As criticism of Israel increasingly becomes a litmus test for progressive candidates seeking to define themselves against establishment Democrats, a New York congressional hopeful is making an attack on AIPAC central to his campaign. In doing so, he’s brushed aside his past support for the group and reversed earlier positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Michael Blake, a former state legislator who ran for mayor in the Democratic primary, accused Rep. Ritchie Torres, a three-term pro-Israel progressive from the Bronx, of putting Israel’s military interests ahead of addressing his district’s affordability crisis; he also accuses Torres of being influenced by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s support. “Ritchie Torres cares more about Bibi than he cares about the Bronx, more about AIPAC than he does about your academics,” Blake said in his campaign launch video last week.
Polling shows AIPAC’s influence is increasingly unpopular among some mainstream Democrats. Last year, the group’s United Democracy Project super PAC spent $28 million in high-stakes Democratic primaries. That included more than $14 million, which contributed to the defeat of Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a strident critic of Israel, in an adjacent New York district. Congressional candidates, including some Jewish Democrats, have promised not to take contributions from AIPAC.
In an interview last week, Blake said he was emboldened by the victory of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the mayoral election and the support he received from voters in his district. A plurality of New York City voters said that Mamdani’s criticism of Israel resonated with them. Nearly half of Mamdani voters, 49%, said his position on the Gaza conflict was a factor in their support, according to a CNN exit poll. A recent poll by the progressive Data for Progress found that three of 10 voters in New York’s 15th congressional district, which Torres represents, dislike AIPAC. However, a majority, 53%, didn’t have an opinion.
Critics ridiculed Blake, a former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former Obama administration official, for targeting AIPAC despite his own past support for the pro-Israel lobby, which included speaking at its events and annual policy conference and joining a 2010 trip to Israel. Blake has scrubbed most of his AIPAC and Israel-related content from his social media.
Some called the launch video — which included clips of social media influencers attacking Torres for his AIPAC support and defense of Israel — antisemitic. Noa Tishby, an author and activist who served as Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization of Israel, noted that the video featured Guy Christensen, an influencer who justified the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.
Mark Treyger, head of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of New York, said Blake’s campaign “further inflames an already inflammatory climate” in New York. “Hurling a bus-load of antisemitic tropes and platforming bigots who cheer antisemitic violence in a launch video is not the pro-humanity flex one thinks it is.”
Torres, who is endorsed by AIPAC, has since his election to Congress in 2020 been a vocal defender of Israel. He faced rising criticism from the party’s left and progressives for his support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, though his stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nuanced. Torres called for an end to the war in Gaza in July and said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership was causing “irreparable damage” to the U.S.-Israel relationship. He has a 63% favorability rating in the district and has more than $14 million in his campaign chest, according to a recent FEC filing. He was listed as one of “25 young(ish) new Democrats to watch in 2026 by New York magazine.
Blake is among several primary challengers to Torres in next year’s election. Benny Stanislawski, a Torres campaign spokesperson, said Bronx voters appreciate their congressman’s “laser-focused” work on issues like public housing and affordability and standing up to President Donald Trump, concerns where most Democrats are aligned.
Buoyed by Mamdani’s victory
Blake, who also ran for mayor in the primary, cross-endorsed Mamdani days before the ranked-choice contest, while Torres withheld an endorsement, citing concerns of voters, including Jewish voters in the Riverdale part of the district, about Mamdani’s past statements and stance on Israel.
“Despite the constant negative barrage of information against Mamdani, he won the district,” Blake said.
Commenting on Mamdani’s victory, AIPAC PAC said in a fundraising email that his win “has galvanized the anti-Israel forces in America” and that the Jewish community “is being politically tested unlike ever before.”
By making AIPAC central to his challenge against Torres, Blake is betting that criticism about the lobby’s influence now resonates with a diverse, younger electorate.
Blake argued that AIPAC and Netanyahu no longer represent where most people stand and accused the incumbent of neglecting his own constituents. Speaking with reporters at the annual SOMOS conference of New York politicians in Puerto Rico on Friday, Blake claimed that Torres “has spoken about the governmental decisions in Israel 300% more than he has talked about poverty in the Bronx.”
An AIPAC spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Inconsistent about Israel
Blake traveled to Israel twice, once in 2014 with the JCRC and in 2017 with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation. Both visits, he said, were eye-opening experiences. He told Jewish Insider during his congressional bid in 2020 that he saw parallels between his experience as an African American in the Bronx and the plight of the Jewish people in Israel.
Blake attended more than a dozen AIPAC events in the past decade, according to his now-deleted social media posts.
Since the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, he has accused the Israeli military of spreading a “horrible and disrespectful lie” regarding the killing of aid workers in Gaza last April, and criticized a bipartisan House bill aimed at federally monitoring the rise in antisemitism on college campuses.
During his campaign for mayor, Blake also flip-flopped on whether Israel was committing genocide. In an interview with the Forward in May, Blake said that his genocide accusation in Oct. 2023 was the “wrong language to use.” He said his campaign had clarified that “the intent was never to state that the State of Israel was doing that.” In another phone interview after the Mamdani endorsement, Blake said he doesn’t agree with everything Mamdani has said on Israel. “I’ve always stated that Israel has a right to defend itself,” he said. In September, Blake reversed his position and posted on X, “Genocide is happening in Gaza.”
Last week, Blake insisted he never changed his position. “The question that gets asked to me, ‘Why did we state differently in the mayoral campaign?’” he said. “The only reason I said that is that people couldn’t hear you in these conversations. But we can’t ignore the pain.”
Assemblymember Simcha Eichenstein, an Orthodox Democrat from Brooklyn, said in a post on X that Blake presented himself to him during the mayoral campaign as “the most pro-Israel candidate.” Blake dismissed that characterization as “factually inaccurate.”
Blake said he supports an arms embargo on Israel, but would still support funding for the Iron Dome defense system. “I think we have to be attentive to the moment that we’re in right now,” he said. “That does not at all mean that you don’t believe in the security of Israel. But it just means we have to have a shift in some of the funding decisions.”
Asked if he’d seek the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America, Blake said he would, although the DSA had asked candidates seeking their support to pledge not to travel to Israel. In 2021, he called the local DSA chapter’s questionnaire about the issue “outrageous and antisemitic.”
“I am not determined on where I’m not going to travel,” Blake said. His spokesperson intervened and added, “There are plenty of DSA members who do not line up with the platform of DSA.”
Blake also demurred when asked whether, like the new mayor-elect, he supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In 2016, Blake co-sponsored a resolution that rejects BDS. “There have to be actions that are being taken” against funding to Israel, he said. “And as people are considering what has to happen around funding, around BDS or anti-BDS, that is for them to make that own determination.”
The post Why this congressional candidate is making attacks on AIPAC central to his campaign appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran’s Water Crisis Worsens as President Warns Tehran May Need to Be Evacuated
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a meeting in Ilam, Iran, June 12, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has endured an extreme drought in recent months, depleting the country’s reservoirs and leading President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn that the capital may even need to be evacuated.
“If rationing doesn’t work, we may have to evacuate Tehran,” Pezeshkian said last week, adding that the Iranian regime will start restricting water supplies in the city next month if there isn’t more rain.
According to Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company, 19 major dams comprising 10 percent of the country’s reservoirs have run dry. In Tehran — a city with 10 million people in the city itself and 18 million in the metropolitan area — five dams that provide drinking water have hit “critical” levels, with one at below 8 percent capacity.
Hossein Esmaeilian, managing director of the Water and Wastewater Company in Mashad, the country’s second largest city with four million residents, told state media that reserves have fallen below 3 percent and that “the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Esmaeilian added that “only 3 percent of the combined capacity of Mashhad’s four water-supplying dams — Torogh, Kardeh, Doosti, and Ardak — remains. Apart from Doosti Dam, the other three are out of operation.”
Iranian Energy Minister Abbas Ali Abadi has stated that “some nights we might decrease the water flow to zero.” He said on Iranian state television on Saturday that this was needed “so that reservoirs can refill.”
“If people can reduce consumption by 20 percent, it seems possible to manage the situation without rationing or cutting off water,” Esmaeilian urged Iranians, suggesting that those consuming the most would see cuts to their water supply first.
However, environmental researcher Azam Bahrami told German media outlet DW that “reduced consumption among the population is nowhere near enough to overcome this crisis.”
“One look at the water consumption pyramid shows that the agriculture sector consumes about 80-90 percent, the biggest share,” Bahrami continued. “As long as other sectors are positioned as priority … the water saving measures will not be very successful.”
The BBC reported that Iranian weather officials do not expect rain in the next 10 days. Mohammad-Ali Moallem, who manages the Karaj Dam, said that there was a 92 percent decrease in rain compared to last year.
“We have only 8 percent water in our reservoir — and most of it is unusable and considered ‘dead water,’” he added.
Stuttgart University researcher Mohammad Javad Tourian told DW about the rate of water loss Iran has seen in recent years.
“Iran loses a volume the size of Lake Constance almost every three years,” Tourian said. “In total, some 370 cubic kilometers have disappeared over the last 23 years. This means the problem is very serious.”
The question of a potential evacuation of Tehran remains unresolved. Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi stated that fleeing the city due to the drought “makes no sense at all.”
Tourian identified actions that Iran could take to provide “rapid relief,” saying that prioritizing drinking water in key cities and the “temporary diverting of less critical usage” could be effective as quick, short-term steps.
However, actions to create a sustainable solution to the water crisis remain elusive.
While the Islamic regime in Iran struggles to quench the thirst of the Iranian people, its military reportedly remains stocked in its missiles targeting Israel.
“Our missile power today far surpasses that of the 12-day war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last week, referring to the regime’s brief conflict with Israel in June. “The enemy in the recent 12-day war failed to achieve all its objectives and was defeated.”
Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh likewise boasted of Iranian military might, saying on Monday that the country’s “defense production has improved both in quantity and quality compared to before the 12-day Israeli-imposed war in June.”
Last week, a US official confirmed that Iran had initiated a plan to assassinate Ambassador Einat Kranz Neiger, Israel’s emissary in Mexico City.
“The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat,” the official told i24 News. “This is just the latest in a long history of Iran’s global lethal targeting of diplomats, journalists, dissidents, and anyone who disagrees with them, something that should deeply worry every country where there is an Iranian presence.”
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Pope Leo names Italian Holocaust film ‘Life is Beautiful’ as one of his 4 favorites of all time
(JTA) — Pope Leo XIV included the 1997 Holocaust movie “Life Is Beautiful” among his four favorite films of all time.
“Life Is Beautiful,” a melodrama by Italian filmmaker and comedian Robert Benigni, follows an Italian Jewish father and his son as they are sent to a Nazi concentration camp. There the father uses humor and misdirection in an effort to hide the truth of the camps from his son.
The film was a global box-office hit and received seven Oscar nominations, winning three. Another movie set during Nazi rule, the 1965 musical “The Sound of Music,” also made the pope’s list, which was rounded out by the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Robert Redford’s stark family drama, “Ordinary People.”
Pope Leo did not elaborate on his reasons for the selections in the truncated video posted by Variety announcing a convening of filmmakers at the Vatican that will begin Saturday.
“Life Is Beautiful” has long been a controversial film among Jews. While some embraced it as a fable of spiritual resistance, critics recoiled at the juxtaposition of broad humor with the Holocaust and said it distorted the experience of concentration camp victims and survivors. Among its critics is Mel Brooks, who also objected that Benigni was not Jewish and couldn’t fully understand the Holocaust. (The actor-director’s Catholic father reportedly was held prisoner in Bergen-Belsen during the war.)
The Vatican also announced that several global filmmakers would be attending the upcoming cinema convening, to begin Saturday. Those include Jewish comedy director Judd Apatow; Pawel Pawlikowski, a Polish filmmaker of Jewish descent and the director of the Oscar-winning Holocaust film “Ida”; and Marco Bellochio, the Italian director of a historical film about the 19th-century kidnapping of Italian Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara by the Catholic Church.
The pope, who formerly studied under a Catholic leader of Jewish-Catholic relations in the U.S., recently held an event marking the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the declaration that overturned centuries of Catholic doctrine by absolving Jews of killing Jesus. At the event, a member of the pope’s Swiss guard allegedly made a spitting gesture toward a Jewish woman guest; the Vatican recently announced an internal investigation into the matter.
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Gal Gadot wins Genesis Prize for her ‘defense of Israel’ as Gaza war divides Hollywood
(JTA) —Actor Gal Gadot has won the Genesis Prize, sometimes called the “Jewish Nobel,” for supporting Israel even as backlash against the country’s actions in Gaza rocked Hollywood.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Gadot has been an outspoken advocate for Israelis taken captive by Hamas. Calling herself “a proud Jew and a proud Israeli,” she said in a statement that she would dedicate the $1 million award to “organizations who will help Israel heal.”
Recipients of the prize, first awarded in 2014, customarily donate it to causes they choose, which have included advancing women’s equality, racial and economic justice, and combating antisemitism and “efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel,” according to a release from the Genesis Prize Foundation, which is based in Israel.
Stan Polovets, the co-founder and CEO of The Genesis Prize Foundation, praised Gadot’s “moral clarity” in a statement.
“The award recognizes her bravery and moral courage — her steadfast defense of Israel at great personal and professional risk, her advocacy for the hostages, her compassion for victims of terror, and her empathy for all innocent victims of this terrible war unleashed by Hamas,” he said.
Gadot, who served two years in the IDF as part of Israel’s compulsory service before being cast in the title role in the 2017 superhero film “Wonder Woman,” has repeatedly used her platform to campaign for the release of Israeli hostages. On Oct. 12, 2023, she was among 700 celebrities and entertainment leaders, including Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis and Chris Pine, who signed a letter condemning Hamas for “evil” and “barbaric acts of terrorism.”
That same day, Gadot posted an Instagram story that said, “Killing innocent Palestinians is horrific. Killing innocent Israelis is horrific. If you don’t feel the same, I think you should ask yourself why that is.” The post sparked outrage from some Israelis over her comparison of Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
Gadot deleted the story and apologized. Since then, she has not used the words “Palestinians” or “Gaza” on social media.
Gadot also helped organize a screening of graphic Oct. 7 footage in Los Angeles in November 2023, prompting a demonstration by pro-Palestinian activists who said the film was “Gal Gadot military propaganda” used to justify Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Though Israel garnered sympathy in some parts of Hollywood after Oct. 7, its devastating war in Gaza over the next two years has roiled the entertainment industry. Israel and Hamas agreed to a fragile ceasefire last month.
More than 3,000 celebrities, including Emma Stone, Bowen Yang and Jewish creatives such as Jonathan Glazer, Andrew Garfield and Hannah Einbinder, signed onto a boycott of Israeli film institutions in September. Another letter from celebrities opposing the boycott amassed 1,200 signatures.
The Genesis Prize was most recently awarded to Argentina’s president Javier Milei for “his steadfast commitment to the State of Israel during one of the most difficult years in the history of the Jewish state,” according to the prize committee. Milei went to Jerusalem in June to accept the prize
The Israeli-American actor Natalie Portman was awarded the Genesis Prize in 2018, but she declined to attend the Jerusalem ceremony because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak there. At the time, Israeli forces had killed dozens of Palestinians in response to protests on the Gaza border.
Gadot, who recently starred as the Evil Queen in a live-action adaptation of “Snow White,” is set to play a Holocaust survivor in an upcoming film, “Ruin.”
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