Liberal New York congressman Ritchie Torres slammed the media for "sanitizing" Hamas terrorists who are brutally attacking Israel and killed at least 700 Israelis.
"If you murder, wound, rape, and abduct civilians and children, as Hamas has done, you are not a militant. You are a terrorist. The media should stop sanitizing terrorists as ‘militants,’" Torres tweeted Saturday.
The Israeli government officially declared war on Sunday, the first time the nation has made such a declaration since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, after terrorist organization Hamas launched a surprise attack on the nation, launching rockets from the Gaza Strip.
At least 1,100 people have died since the war began on Saturday, according to officials, including 700 people in Israel and at least another 260 people at a music festival in southern Israel. At least 400 were killed in Gaza after the Israeli military hit more than 800 targets in the Gaza Strip.
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"Hamas’s surprise terrorist attack by air, land, and sea is Israel’s 9/11. Losing 600 Israelis is the equivalent of losing about 20,000 Americans," Torres tweeted Sunday morning before officials said fatalities swelled to at least 700 people.
"Hamas is a terrorist organization, just like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are terrorist organizations. Back in 2001, no one in the mainstream media described the attackers on 9/11 as militants," Torres added.
Mainstream news outlets have called Hamas terrorists "militants" within their reporting, despite the U.S. Department of State designating the Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist group a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, according to the agency's website.
Torres was elected as a New York congressman in 2020 and secured his reelection last year. He was repeatedly spoken out about his support of Israel, and called himself "the embodiment of a pro-Israel progressive" back in 2019.
The New York Democrat also slammed the NYC Democratic Socialists of America for planning an "All Out for Palestine" rally in Times Square on Sunday.
"In solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid," the socialist group posted to their X account ahead of the planned rally.
"The DSA refers to '75 years of occupation,'" Torres shot back in a response tweet. "For the DSA, the occupation is Israel itself. Ending the occupation means ending Israel—the home of the world’s largest Jewish population."
"DSA has been so normalized within New York politics that it will pay no price at all for its genocidal celebration of Israel’s destruction in the wake of Israel’s deadliest terrorist attack. A sign of how far my beloved New York has fallen," he continued.
Hamas has reportedly taken a large amount of hostages amid the attacks, including women and children, while U.S. officials are working to confirm if American citizens have been taken hostage.
