US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during a rally to mark 506 days in Hamas captivity at Naumburg Bandshell at Central Park on Feb. 23, 2025, in New York City. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat and one of the US Congress’s most outspoken supporters of Israel, is facing multiple challengers seeking to unseat him in New York’s 15th Congressional District, a race that is shaping up to be in large part a referendum on his pro-Israel advocacy.

Former New York State Assemblyman Michael Blake, who also served as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced his 2026 Democratic primary campaign last week, taking direct aim at Torres’s support of Israel. In his launch video, Blake accused Torres of caring more about Israel than his Bronx district, claiming the congressman has prioritized foreign policy over the district’s economic struggles. Blake has even accused the incumbent of supporting a so-called “genocide” through his support of US military aid to Israel.

“I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a genocide,” Blake said in an announcement video.

“I will focus on affordable housing and books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi,” he continued, referring to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee and using the nickname for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I will invest in the community. Ritchie invests in bombs. I want to end credit scores for housing. Ritchie only wants to take credit.”

The district, one of the poorest in the nation, has a child poverty rate of 37 percent, according to the US Census Bureau, the highest in the country and a figure Blake has cited to argue for redirecting attention to the needs of working families.

Blake’s attacks have prompted backlash of their own. As reported by the New York Post, the challenger appears to have deleted years of social-media posts praising Israel and AIPAC, the influential pro-Israel lobbying group he once openly supported. Between 2014 and 2017, Blake attended AIPAC events and heaped praise on the Jewish state. Blake subsequently deleted photos of himself at AIPAC events after receiving criticism. 

Torres’s other declared challenger, Andre Easton, a Bronx teacher running as an independent backed by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, has called for cutting all US aid to Israel and replacing it with domestic social spending. Blake and Easton’s campaigns underscore an ideological rift inside the Democratic Party between the progressive far left, which has been largely hostile to the Jewish state, and the more moderate wing.

A campaign video launched by Easton showed pictures of the candidate sporting a keffiyeh — a traditional Arab headdress repurposed during the Gaza war to signal support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel, while decrying capitalism and poverty rampaging the district. He argued that “billionaires” are corrupting politicians to vote in support of a so-called “genocide in Gaza.” Easton also outlined a litany of promises, including free childcare and guaranteed jobs. 

Torres, 37, a Bronx native who is both Afro-Latino and openly gay, has not shied away from the fight. He has long framed his support for Israel as part of a broader belief in liberal democracy and human rights and is known in Washington as one of the few progressive Democrats willing to challenge the party’s left flank on Middle East issues. Torres’s campaign dismissed Blake’s challenge as opportunistic, and the incumbent has vowed to continue his vocal support for Israel.

Allies of Torres argue that since his election in 2020, he has secured federal funding for affordable housing, local infrastructure, and small-business relief while being instrumental in directing pandemic recovery aid to neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19.

New York’s 15th District, encompassing much of the South Bronx, remains overwhelmingly Democratic and majority black and Hispanic.

March 29, 2025, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: A pro-Palestinian demonstrator burns a hand-fashioned Israeli flag. Photo: James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

A Jewish columnist from Amsterdam has publicly denounced yet another example of rising antisemitism in health-care settings, saying she was denied medical care by a nurse who refused to remove a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.

On Monday, Jonath Weinberger, a dual Belgian-Israeli citizen who moved to the Netherlands in 2024, described how a visit for urgent medical care quickly turned into an unsettling experience, in a column for the Dutch Jewish news site Jonet.

Two months ago, Weinberger required urgent medical attention and was taken to a local hospital, the name of which she chose not to disclose.

“As I stepped into the room with the doctor and nurse, I was shocked. The nurse was wearing a large pin shaped like a fist in the colors of the Palestinian flag,” she wrote in her column.

Feeling uncomfortable with the situation, Weinberger told the paramedic that she was uneasy about the nurse’s pin. The paramedic then “gently [or cautiously, depending on the translation]” asked the nurse if she could remove it.

“I didn’t feel safe being treated by someone displaying such a political statement,” Weinberger said.  

But the nurse “reacted indignantly, muttered that she no longer wished to treat [her], and walked out of the room.”

Weinberger recalled having to wait for another nurse to arrive, despite her medical emergency, before she could finally receive treatment.

Now that she has almost fully recovered, Weinberger is considering taking legal action against the hospital.

The experience “was outrageous, as health-care professionals are legally and ethically required to treat all patients equally, no matter their background, religion, political views, or sexual orientation,” she said. “I hope that this nurse is held accountable for her irresponsible and unprofessional behavior.”

Weinberger explained that her fears were driven by the rising tide of antisemitism in health-care settings across several Western countries, including the growing number of medical professionals openly voicing antisemitic views and even outright death threats against Israelis.

“Many staunch anti-Israel protesters hide behind the term ‘anti-Zionist,’ but in reality, they are often simply antisemites,” she wrote. “That’s why I found it completely inappropriate for a health-care professional to display such a political statement while I was receiving urgent medical care.”

“It wasn’t even a small Palestinian flag, but an actual fist — a symbol of militant resistance — and that doesn’t belong in a hospital. A hospital should be a neutral, safe space for everyone,” she continued.

This antisemitic incident reflects a wider pattern across the West, where rising antisemitism within health-care settings in recent months has left Jewish communities feeling unsafe and marginalized.

Elsewhere in the Netherlands, local police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.

In Italy, two medical workers filmed themselves at their workplace discarding medicine produced by the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals in protest against the Jewish state and the war in Gaza.

In Belgium, a local hospital suspended a physician after discovering antisemitic content on his social media, including a cartoon showing babies being decapitated by the tip of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires poised to devour a sleeping baby.

The same doctor came under fire after he recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report.

Several such incidents have occurred in the United Kingdom, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan last month to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the country’s National Health Service (NHS).

One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.

Aladwan’s arrest followed the UK’s top medical regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC), clearing her to continue treating patients. She had made antisemitic social media claims such as labeling the Royal Free Hospital in London :a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and asserting that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”

Aladwan wrote on April 29 that “I will never condemn the 7th of October,” referring to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

In September, a North London hospital suspended a physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.

In Australia, two nurses filmed themselves bragging online about refusing to treat Israelis, making throat-slitting gestures, and boasting of killing Jews. Both lost their licenses and now face criminal charges.

Weinberger referenced the Australian example in her column when discussing her mindset in the hosptial.

“Let me assure you: as a Zionist Jew with Israeli citizenship, you feel very unsafe at a time like this,” she wrote. “So much was going through my mind at that moment. I’d also seen TikTok videos where nurses threatened to kill Zionist patients. And there’s already been a case in Australia.”

A US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago told The Algemeiner earlier this year that she no longer feels safe in hospitals given the atmosphere of heightened antisemitism.

“In the past year alone, my little boy has witnessed many hostile protests where ‘anti-Zionists’ have actually come into the Jewish community without permits to intimidate us. Time and time again, instead of [authorities] dispersing and arresting anyone in the crowd for screaming racial slurs and threats, Jews are asked to evacuate and told if they don’t run away, they are inciting violence,” the woman said.

“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” she continued, referring to the case in Australia. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”

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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