Feb. 5—On Jan. 31, the Jerusalem Post, a major Israeli newspaper, published an article attacking congressional candidate Jose Vega as “antisemitic” and part of the “cultlike” LaRouche movement. It also defended his opponent in the race, incumbent Democrat Ritchie Torres. The lengthy article, which was picked up from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and was also covered in the Times of Israel, and by B’nai B’rith Budapest, revisits a short interview that Vega, who is running in the Bronx borough of New York City, had granted to social media “influencer” Erik Warsaw.
As Vega pointed out in a statement issued shortly afterwards, the video that was posted had not been “checked with my campaign before it appeared. It is the product of an interview I did with influencer Erik Warsaw, which he then designed and uploaded. He provided graphics and other background images which suggested views that are in fact contrary to what I said and what I believe. They [Jerusalem Post] then ascribe to me what were Warsaw’s additions—and then use the whole concoction to denounce me as ‘antisemitic.’ This is a lie and a piece of transparent sophistry. Had any one of these publications wished to, they could have contacted me to confirm what they, instead, misreported.”
The authors of the article falsely claim that Vega is attacking the Bronx’s wealthy Riverdale neighborhood’s Jewish community, and making “antisemitic tropes.” They also slander Lyndon LaRouche, with whose movement Vega has been active, as a Holocaust denier. What they are actually upset about is that Vega has very effectively confronted Ritchie Torres publicly over his unconditional support for the policy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including the genocide in Gaza. He has also dubbed the district of the Bronx where he is running “Gaza West.” By that, he means that both the Gaza Strip and the congressional district he hopes to represent, which is the poorest in the entire United States, have been devastated and are in urgent need of crash economic development programs such as LaRouche’s Oasis Plan for Gaza and the projects he has outlined, for the Bronx, in his campaign program. The full statement issued by Jose Vega is available at votevega.nyc.
