Seeking to unseat Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Jose Vega, who is running for Congress as a Democrat/Independent in New York’s 15th Congressional District, released a campaign video alleging that Zionists “bought and controlled” Torres, and are keeping the Bronx poor.
“The Bronx is one of the poorest districts in America, but also has some of the richest Zionist millionaires in America, too. How is that?” Erik Warsaw, an independent journalist, asked Vega in the video on X.
“Because rich people like to live in areas where they can buy the politicians easily, like Ritchie Torres, who is bought and controlled by Zionist influencers and millionaires who all live in Riverdale,” answered Vega, noting the residential neighborhood in the northwestern Bronx that has a substantial and historically significant Jewish population.
Torres responded to the video: “My opposition sees antisemitism not as a tragedy, but as a strategy.”
He added that “no amount of defamation or disinformation will ever shame me out of representing every community in my district. We are One Bronx, and no amount of Jew-hatred will divide us.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S.’s former special antisemitism envoy, agreed with Torres’s assessment. “Once, if someone said something antisemitic and it became public, they apologized. Sometimes profusely,” she said. “More recently, they just shrug their shoulders and deny it is antisemitism (‘Oh, it’s only criticism of Israel’). Now, as Ritchie Torres correctly notes, it’s become a strategy.”
“It takes a lot of chutzpah for someone who wants to represent significant black and Jewish communities to link up with a neo-Nazi,” Yaakov Kaplan, vice chair of Brooklyn Community Board 12, said of Vega collaborating with Warsaw on the video.
Vega explained that he was only pointing out the disparity between Riverdale and the rest of the South Bronx. “Because I did, people try to say I’m antisemitic,” he wrote.
“You know why?” he added. “Because they want to keep the conversation away from the ugly fact that Ritchie Torres was made the congressman to keep the War Party in place, and the Bronx poor. And he works for the people that want to keep the Bronx poor, period.”
“I am campaigning against the War Party, including kidnapping President Maduro, the secret war in Iran and the genocide in Gaza,” Vega said.
