House Democrat Ritchie Torres Fires Back at Ilhan Omar for Asking Him How Many Palestinians He Wants to Die: ‘I Obviously Resent’ That

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) told CNN’s Dana Bash that he resented Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) implication that he hoped more Palestinian innocents would die during an interview about the progressives’ divergent views on Israel Monday.

After Bash asked Torres about his battles with various progressives over the last few weeks, Torres decried the “concerted campaign to demonize Israel as if it is the root of all evil.”

“When you systematically demonize Israel, what inevitably follows is the dehumanization of Israeli victims. What inevitably follows is a democratic socialist rally that glorifies the terrorism of Hamas. And so, in my opinion, the hatred for Israel, the hatred has been taken too far,” said Torres. “And, you know, hatred is dangerous because it can easily harden into violence. And we’ve seen the demonization of Israel lead to a global outbreak of anti-Semitic violence, vandalism and vitriol.”

“You know, here in New York City, there was a Jewish woman who was punched in the face abruptly, unprovoked, simply because she was Jewish. And so we are seeing anti-Semitic incidents take hold in an atmosphere of amplified anti-Semitism and heightened hatred against Israel as a Jewish state,” he continued.

Bash then brought up Omar, who recently wondered aloud how many Palestinians Torres would be comfortable with dying in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, asking him for his reaction to Omar’s query.

He replied:

I mean, I obviously resent those comments. You know, every casualty is a tragedy. Every war is a humanitarian crisis. But we have to keep in mind the causes of the war. Israel did not start the war. The war was imposed upon Israel by the barbaric terrorism of Hamas, which butchered 1,400 Israelis, including babies. You know, my colleague, Representative Omar, has voted against Iron Dome, which is a missile defense system that protects Israeli civilians from relentless rocket fire. Were it not for Iron Dome interceptions, there would be far more dead Israelis, far more by orders of magnitude. And so the policy positions that she has taken would have led to even more dead Israelis and more dead Palestinians.

Watch above via CNN.