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.”

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