“This is pursuing a proven and failed strategy,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a recent radio interview. “So why do it, why kill kids, why put people in danger, why perpetuate these cycles when we’ve done it so many times, and it’s never kept us safe?”
Yet five years after she burst onto the political stage, even some critics say Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s approach has become more nuanced, as she attempts to balance the demands of a leftist movement that holds justice for Palestinians as a key plank and includes large numbers of Jewish voters with varying views on the conflict. (Her own safely Democratic district in Queens and the Bronx is largely Latino, Black and Asian, with only small Jewish and Arab populations.)
Calls for a cease-fire by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and others drew a stern rebuke from the White House, and she faced backlash for voting against a bipartisan resolution that expressed strong support for Israel. But she has also taken steps to differentiate herself from allies like Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri, sidestepping some of the left’s most inflammatory critiques — like accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza — to focus on the war’s mounting human cost.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who did not agree to an interview, met in Washington last month with the families of Jewish hostages kidnapped by Hamas. She has repeatedly condemned the group and supports a two-state solution shunned by some on the left. And at a time when many liberal Jews feel they are being abandoned by the left, she has warned about “disgusting and unacceptable” antisemitism in a post to 8.4 million Instagram followers, saying, “No movement of integrity should tolerate it.”
“You can see how hard Alexandria is trying to listen compassionately across the lines of this conflict,” said Brad Lander, the left-leaning New York City comptroller who is the highest-ranking Jewish city official. “I’m not saying anyone is doing it perfectly, but there is a difference between trying and not trying.”
More moderate Jewish Democrats have also taken note. Representative Dan Goldman of New York, who along with Mr. Torres voted this week to censure Ms. Tlaib for using divisive pro-Palestinian rhetoric, said he and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had “made a conscious effort to keep an open line of communication” even if they did not always agree on the conflict.
On the other side of the Bronx River, Mr. Torres, 35, who is gay and Afro-Latino, has staked out a strikingly different project to the right of many of his peers, offering himself as a counterweight to his party’s leftward lurch.
His own social media following is relatively small — 170,000 followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s 13.2 million — but the combativeness of Mr. Torres’s retorts has stood out. In just the last few days, he compared a cease-fire to asking Israel to “become the author of its own annihilation,” called claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza “blood libel” and argued that most Israelis are not actually white, as those who see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a racial struggle claim, but “people of color in the American sense.”
Mr. Torres has reserved special vitriol for the Democratic Socialists of America, the small but influential leftist group that has pushed for boycotts of Israel and counts Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as a member. In an interview, he said that the D.S.A. was trying to infiltrate the Democratic Party “to impose the ideological litmus tests on Israel” and “cleanse” those who disagree with them. He said he was on a “publicly stated mission” to undermine it.
“I do worry that the next generation is increasingly indoctrinated with anti-Israel hate so virulent that it renders them indifferent to the coldblooded murder of Jews in Israel,” he said.
His views are no surprise to those who watched Mr. Torres, a proud college dropout and defender of public housing, evolve from left-aligned political upstart to more traditional Democratic congressman.
Though he represents an overwhelmingly Black and Latino district that includes only several thousand Jewish voters, he has improbably made the conflict 5,700 miles away a top priority since 2015, when he traveled to Israel on a City Council delegation. It was his first trip abroad, and Mr. Torres said witnessing both the fragility of the frontier and Tel Aviv’s openness to gay life left him with “profound empathy” for Israel and a commitment to a two-state solution.
His combativeness has infuriated the left. Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist who is close to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, called Mr. Torres “a propagandist for the Israeli government.”
Jeremy Cohan, a leader of the D.S.A.’s New York City chapter, said Mr. Torres was unfairly conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. “It is opportunistic, it is gross, it is personally offensive to me as a Jew,” he said.
It remains far from clear how many left-leaning Democrats Mr. Torres is moving. Even some senior colleagues who agree with him privately worry that his approach may alienate some Black, Latino and other progressive voters at a time when their support is critical.
And yet, his actions have resonated on a visceral level with many American Jews facing one of the most frightening periods since the Holocaust, and have brought him a new level of political celebrity.
