Prominent Jew-hating journalist Mehdi Hasan was rarin’ to blame the victims of the Amsterdam soccer pogrom — but Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who’s bucked his party’s vile stance on Israel from the start, has shot him down.
Hasan on X openly said that the Jews chased through the streets and assaulted after a soccer match were guilty of “provoking” the massive surge of organized collective violence because (he claims) a few fans of visiting team Maccabi acted up first.
This is a simple lie: WhatsApp messages have surfaced from the day before the game, calling for a “Jew hunt” and describing Maccabi fans as “cancer dogs.”
It’s also a plea to sympathize with antisemitic thugs.
And Torres bravely leaped into the fray.
He lambasted Hasan on Instagram: “Mehdi Hasan is justifying a pogrom against Jews in Amsterdam. Yet make no mistake: mainstream media will continue platforming Hasan because America no longer treats antisemitism as a moral line that should never be crossed.”
Torres is right that Hasan’s a pogrom-justifier.
Hasan’s clumsy efforts to backpedal from his initial stance prove it.
The rep is right as well about the fact that antisemitism is no longer treated in this country as forbidden and that Hasan will face no real consequences.
That’s thanks to decades-long efforts by radical leftists to normalize Jew-hate as a form of “resistance” and “anti-imperialism.”
And to a Democratic Party that played footsie with those same radicals and then offered them a full political embrace.
To say nothing of the bear hug Barack Obama and Joe Biden offered Iran.
Since Oct. 7, the cadres of the left no longer bother to hide their hate, openly praising Hamas and using Goebbels-like rhetoric in which only Jews can ever be guilty.
Hasan prominent among them.
It would be the easiest thing in the world for mainstream journos and national Democrats to prove Torres wrong by rejecting Hasan and his co-ideologues.
Don’t hold your breath.