Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign.
B (0:06)
Hello, welcome to Ask Khaliv Anything. This is a very special episode. I'm here with a hero of mine, Congressman Richie Torres. Before we get into it, I just want to say thank you to Jason and Loreal Klinghofer for sponsoring this episode in honor of Jason's grandmother, Nusia Klinghofer, a Holocaust survivor who passed away last year. Thank you. Congressman Torres and I come from very different worlds. You come from the East Bronx. You have a history and a background that is very much from poverty and from real trials and tribulations. A single mother, a neighborhood with tremendous amounts of crime and problems. You represent that neighborhood today. And you have become now a congressman. You rose up the ranks, I would say, of the very much the progressive part of the Democratic Party. You were a 2016 delegate for Bernie Sanders. Richie, why are you and I now having a conversation? Because you're one of the most famous congressmen in the Jewish community and one of the most loved, probably the single most loved representative in the U.S. congress of the Jewish community who has held the line on Israel. Can you describe an arc that takes you from really a deep background in progressive politics to a place where you're now critical of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party on these issues and therefore just so fascinating and so important to all the people I know?
A (1:34)
Well, for me, the most important virtue in political leadership, one of the most important virtues, is empathy. You know, when you're a representative, you have to represent your various constituencies, communities, as if you were part of the community. So I have a wonderfully varied district. I have a substantial Latino population, African American population. I represent Little Italy, Little Ireland, an Albanian population, Little Albania, Little Albania, and a vibrant Jewish community in Riverdale. And so I try to represent every community as if I were a member of the community. I try to represent the Jewish community in Riverdale as if I were a member of the Jewish community. I feel like that should be the ideal, the standard of representation in a multiracial, multi ethnic, multi religious democracy like the United States or like the state of Israel. So the starting point for me is empathy, which was instilled in me by my mother. Everything that is virtuous about me is attributable to my mother. And everything that's vicious about me, I'm fully to blame. But you know, to your attributable to politics. But the question, you know, how did I come to be a Zionist? I will be the first to admit I'm an improbable Zionist because I grew up in a community that was almost exclusively Latino and African American. I had no engagement with the Jewish community as a child, no knowledge of Judaism or Zionism. And when I first entered politics in 2014, I was a blank slate tabula rasa on the subject of Israel. And then I was invited by the Jewish Community Relations Council to go to Israel for the first time. It was the first time I ever had an opportunity to travel abroad. And when you experience both the complexity and the majesty of Israel, it's a profoundly transformative experience. You know, going to the Old City, going to Yad Vashem, going to the Masada, going to the Gaza envelope. I remember going to stay rote and speaking to the local mayor, who said to me that the majority of his children struggle with post traumatic stress because families like his live under the threat of relentless rocket fire. I remember seeing the bomb shelters, and I thought to myself, imagine the sheer trauma of an Israeli child seeking refuge in a bomb shelter while rockets are being fired and sirens are going off and adults are panicking in a scene of pandemonium. And all of this is unfolding not during wartime, but during peacetime. This is what normal looks like in the Gaza envelope. And I come from the Bronx, which is a rough neighborhood. I have family members and friends and constituents who live in fear of guns and bullets. But no one in the United States lives in fear of rockets and missiles. None of us worry that Mexico and Canada are going to fire rockets and missiles into American homes and communities. And so I came to realize early on that Israel faces a level of volatility and insecurity that has no analog in the American experience. And, you know, after experiencing Israel firsthand, I came to. To be aware of my own privilege as an American. You know, as an American, I live in a continental republic, you know, guarded by oceans, surrounded by peaceful neighbors, which is a striking contrast to the security situation of Israel, which is a tiny democracy the size of New Jersey, surrounded by enemies that are intent on wiping it from the map. And so Israel confronts a security situation that has no equivalent anywhere else in the world. Yossi Klein Halevi beautifully describes Israel as democracy in duress. It is the best experiment in democracy under duress that I've ever seen.