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Rep. Randy Fine’s incendiary comments on Muslims alarm many Jews — without denting his standing on the pro-Israel right
(JTA) — In his brief time in the House, freshman Jewish Congressman Randy Fine has built a reputation for combative outbursts — particularly about Muslims.
But the Florida Republican ignited a new round of controversy earlier this month with a series of disparaging remarks about Palestinians and what he called “mainstream Muslims” that his critics —on the left and right — say are not just provocative but amount to “genocidal.”
“I don’t know how you make peace with those who seek your destruction. I think you destroy them first,” Fine said during a Dec. 10 hearing with the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, after remarking, “There has to be a reformation, really, of Islam.”
He doubled down on similar rhetoric aimed at “mainstream Muslims” and “mainstream Islam” in the week that followed, and has intensified his stance following the Hanukkah terror attack in Australia by avowed ISIS supporters.
“It’s time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible,” he declared in a statement posted to social media. “Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”
Fine’s remarks — which have also included putting blame on Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar “and her fellow Somalis” for a public assistance fraud scheme carried out largely by Somali defendants — go far beyond what other Jewish pro-Israel elected officials have said publicly. They have been widely condemned, including by other Jews.
“As a part of the Jewish community, I know that I must speak out,” Noam Shelef, of the progressive group New Jewish Narrative, said in a statement. “Rep Fine, who wears a kippah, will be seen as a face of the American Jewish community. His hate is not who we are.”
Yet at a moment when the global Jewish community is reeling from the aftermath of the Australia attack, Fine’s support among the conservative pro-Israel Jews he seeks to cultivate has not been dented in any obvious way.
The Republican Jewish Coalition remains in Fine’s corner, and pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC has endorsed him heading into a contested primary for his reelection. Since his initial comments about Muslims, he has spoken at a conference hosted by the Jerusalem Post, attended Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Hanukkah party and spoke at a Hanukkah gathering for Young Jewish Conservatives. Some of his fans tell JTA they think his comments about Muslims are on the mark.
“It certainly isn’t the words that I myself would use to describe the situation,” Matt Brodsky, a Jewish GOP strategist who worked with Trump’s first-term Middle East diplomatic team and has worked on political campaigns for Muslim Republicans, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
But, Brodsky said, “He could very well be making a point that the Muslims who would stand with Jews or stand with Israel tend to be the exception, not the rule. And I don’t know that I would argue differently.” Brodsky added that, in the grief of the Australia attacks, he doesn’t want “to be splitting hairs over what a Jew says.”
The Trump administration also seems to agree with Fine’s assessment on restricting Muslims from entering the country. On Dec. 16, the federal government added the Palestinian Authority, as well as new Muslim-majority countries including Syria, to its travel ban.
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, of Alabama, also recently called for a Muslim ban, leading to condemnation from Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Democratic Senate minority leader. (On Dec. 14, Vickie Paladino, a Republican member of the New York City Council, made similar remarks claiming that expelling Muslims would aid the fight against antisemitism, and expounded on her views in the Queens Jewish Link.)
Reached for comment, Fine pointed to his social media statements but also seemed to soften his stance.
“Not all Muslims are or support terrorism,” Fine wrote to JTA. He added that he was “grateful” for “Muslims like” Ahmed el-Ahmed — the bystander in Australia who was shot while disarming one of the gunmen, and has been praised by Jewish groups for his heroism.
Such people, Fine added, “just want to live in peace [and] prosperity with the rest of us.”
Fine, who was elected in an April special election in a deep-red district with few Jews that he himself still had not moved into months after his victory, has made his Jewish identity an unmissable component of his politics. He wears a kippah on the House floor, is an unwavering Israel supporter and has called out members of his own party who he believes have crossed the line into antisemitism. On social media, where he’s adopted the “Hebrew Hammer” moniker, he shows off new MAGA-themed yarmulkes he added to his collection.
Part and parcel with that persona are Fine’s views on Muslims and Palestinians, which some even in his party consider extreme. As the right in general is wrestling with a larger problem of antisemitic influence and the erosion of a once-assured consensus in support for Israel, Fine’s bellicose rhetoric has made enemies on his side of the aisle — even as he, like many other conservatives, has claimed to be following in the footsteps of Charlie Kirk, the slain founder of Turning Point USA.
In July, amid reports that Israel was withholding humanitarian aid to Gaza, Fine simultaneously called such reports “a lie” and also declared, “Release the hostages. Until then, starve away.” The American Jewish Committee and other groups decried his remarks. An undaunted Fine repeated the phrase “starve away,” along with variations like “#KeepOnStarving,” several times in the waning months of the Israel-Gaza war — even as backlash to his remarks grew on the right.
“A Jewish U.S. representative calling for the continued starvation of innocent people and children is disgraceful,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Georgia Republican and recent Trump critic who will be leaving the House in January, tweeted after Fine’s July remarks about Gaza.
Lauren Witzke, a QAnon activist and former Republican Senate candidate in Delaware who attended Turning Point USA’s recent AmericaFest gathering, has repeatedly slung personal insults at Fine. She has promised to “personally fundraise for the candidate who primaries this genocidal freak who gets off watching little toddlers and infants being blown to pieces.” (Aaron Baker, a challenger who also ran against Fine in April, took Witzke up on the offer even as he has made his own support for Israel part of his campaign platform.)
Tucker Carlson, himself a lead driver of antisemitic conspiracy theories on the right and an emergent critic of Israel, has also lambasted Fine over the congressman’s calls, in May, for Gaza to be nuked. During his address at AmericaFest, the recent gathering hosted by right-wing group Turning Point USA at which antisemitism was a hot topic, Carlson more generally criticized Republicans who he said were “attacking millions of Americans because they’re Muslims. It’s disgusting. And I’m a Christian.”
At the time of his “starve away” remarks, Fine had not yet been endorsed by AIPAC for reelection. One of his non-Jewish primary opponents, Palm Coast City Council member Charles Gambaro, harshly criticized Fine’s Gaza remarks and declared that Gambaro, too, would seek AIPAC’s endorsement.
Since then, AIPAC has endorsed Fine.
“The pro-Israel community supports Rep. Fine because of his work to strengthen America’s partnership with Israel,” an AIPAC spokesperson told JTA earlier this month.
Another Jewish institution continuing to back Fine: the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Following his “destroy them first” remarks, the Jewish Democratic Council of America said Fine “is blatantly engaging in hate speech.” The RJC’s X account, in turn, blasted its Democratic counterpart for condemning Fine.
“You are total clowns,” the RJC declared in a tweet directed at the JDCA.
The RJC continued: “Maybe start with holding Hakeem Jeffries accountable for campaigning with and endorsing antisemite Mayor-elect of NYC, Zohran Mamdani.”
The larger digital ecosystem of hard-line supporters of Israel has also regularly championed Fine. “Congressman Randy Fine is speaking truth to power — and it matters,” Betar USA, a pro-Israel group that has also demanded “blood in Gaza” and whose members have protested outside mosques, tweeted Dec. 17, a day after Fine tweeted, “We either wake up or Mainstream Muslims will conquer the West for good.”
“At a time when too many politicians stay silent or hide behind cowardly talking points, Randy Fine stands unapologetically for America, for Israel, and for moral clarity,” the Betar post continued. “He says what others are afraid to say — and he doesn’t back down.”
Gabe Groisman, a Jewish podcaster and former mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida, has also approvingly featured Fine on his podcast.
Not all Jewish conservatives agree with Fine’s bluster.
“On the one hand, I’m glad there is somebody who’s giving voice to a more robust pro-Jewish, pro-Israel point of view,” one Jewish nonprofit professional who ran for office as a Republican told JTA after Fine’s “starve away” remarks this summer. “On the other hand, I wish it was someone other than Randy Fine.”
Without questioning Fine’s pro-Israel bonafides, the former candidate — who asked to remain anonymous, citing ongoing involvement in Jewish organizations — believed the politician was failing to meet the moment.
“Those of us who are publicly, overtly Zionist, and especially those who seek public office based on their Zionism, I think have an obligation to be thoughtful about how they present themselves,” the Republican said, comparing Fine’s outbursts unfavorably to those of far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. “They say things which are then used against Israel in the international press.”
For Brodsky, though, Fine is a necessary truth-teller at a time when vocal Israel critics such as Omar get what he believes is a free pass for their own extreme remarks.
“I personally don’t like getting into games where we deal with shoving a microphone in exclusively Republican faces in order to justify anything a Republican said, but we don’t do that for Ilhan Omar,” he said. Brodsky had worked on the 2024 campaign of a Muslim Republican challenger to Omar until he was fired over tweets in which he stated that Israel should “carpet bomb” an area of Lebanon where Irish peacekeepers were stationed.
Fine is still embracing his role as a heel of sorts. When Omar called for his expulsion earlier this month over his “destroy them first” comments, he had a simple retort: “Go for it.”
The post Rep. Randy Fine’s incendiary comments on Muslims alarm many Jews — without denting his standing on the pro-Israel right appeared first on The Forward.
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Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system
(JTA) — Jews in Ireland reported over 100 antisemitic incidents through a communal reporting system within six months after it launched, according to a new report.
The findings published early Monday by the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland constitute the first attempt to document antisemitic incidents in Ireland.
Irish Jews, a small community of about 2,200, reported 143 incidents between July 2025 and January 2026. These were dominated by verbal abuse, vandalism, threats, exclusion or discrimination and direct digital hate messages. Physical assault was less common, with only three instances reported.
All incidents were self-reported to the JRCI, which cannot independently investigate or adjudicate them. Ireland does not have an official state mechanism for recording antisemitic incidents, the group said. And while the police record hate crimes based on nationality, ethnicity or religion, they do not isolate crimes motivated by antisemitism.
The JRCI said that 30% of incidents were triggered by cues of Jewish identity or Israeli origin, such as a Jewish symbol, an accent or speaking Hebrew in public. Such patterns often crossed the boundaries of hate driven by nationality, ethnicity and religion.
“These dynamics cannot be adequately addressed through generalized anti-racism frameworks alone,” JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said in a statement. “Antisemitism presents distinct characteristics requiring targeted policy responses.”
Cohen called for “a dedicated, standalone national plan to combat antisemitism in Ireland.”
Of the reported incidents, 25 included “Holocaust distortion” or antisemitic conspiracy theories. These findings add to a Claims Conference survey in January, which said that 9% of Irish adults believed the Holocaust was a myth, while another 17% believed the number of Jews killed had been greatly exaggerated. Half of Irish adults did not know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
At the same time, a November 2025 survey by the European Commission surfaced broad recognition of antisemitism in Ireland. 41% of respondents said that antisemitism was a problem in the country and 47% said it had increased over the past five years.
At a ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, Ireland’s taoiseach (or prime minister) Micheál Martin said, “I am acutely conscious that our Jewish community here in Ireland is experiencing a growing level of antisemitism. I know that elements of our public discourse has coarsened.”
Martin has strenuously criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza, saying at the United Nations last year that Israel committed genocide and demonstrated “an abandonment of all norms, all international rules and law.” Catherine Connolly, a socialist politician who has faced backlash for saying Hamas is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people,” was elected as Ireland’s president in October.
Ireland has historically supported the Palestinians, a stance often linked to the country’s own history of British imperial rule, and formally recognized a Palestinian state in 2024.
In Martin’s Holocaust commemoration speech, he also condemned the most recent event to inflame the Irish Jewish community. Late last year, a proposal to rename Herzog Park in Dublin — named for Chaim Herzog, the son of the first Irish chief rabbi who became Israel’s sixth president in 1983 — was decried by Irish Jews who said it would erase Irish Jewish history. The proposal was later tabled.
Martin, who also denounced the proposal when it was active, said the Jewish community “has every right to be deeply concerned and to express that concern.”
Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization and an Irish Jew who grew up in Dublin, said the JRCI report showed a picture of antisemitic incidents that were separate from “a debate about the policies of Israel or a debate about the Palestinian state.”
“When you have discontinuation of service because somebody is heard speaking Hebrew, or has a Jewish-identifying symbol on them, that’s not about a political position on the spectrum towards Israel,” said Taylor. “That’s something that crosses into antisemitism.”
Ireland’s chief rabbi Yoni Wieder said the report reflected experiences he already heard from his congregants.
“The report does not claim that antisemitism has become a daily reality for all Jewish people in Ireland — it has not,” said Wieder. “What it does show is that antisemitism surfaces often enough, and in ordinary enough settings, that it cannot be dismissed as rare or confined to the margins of society. This means that for many, Jewish belonging in Ireland feels more fragile than it should.”
The post Irish Jews report 143 antisemitic incidents in 6 months through a new reporting system appeared first on The Forward.
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Yet again, Israel’s public shelters become sites of camaraderie amid steep danger
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Spirits ran high inside a large public bomb shelter in the Israeli coastal city of Jaffa, with loud chatter, singing and greetings of “Happy Iran Holiday,” an incongruous soundtrack to the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran and the hundreds of missiles that followed.
The room itself looked much cheerier than most shelters, with a ball pit and bright Gymboree mattresses left over from its other job in peacetime, when it doubles as a kindergarten.
A day earlier, the shelter became the accidental venue for a bar mitzvah celebration, when worshipers from the synagogue across the road took refuge there.
One particularly raucous group was made up mostly of American-Israelis from the neighborhood. One of them, Steph Graber, said she was in a good mood despite being exhausted from middle-of-the-night runs to the shelter.
“I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the adrenaline of war or something,” she said on Sunday morning. “But also it’s amazing to see the U.S. and Israel as allies working together to reduce the threat from Iran.”
Graber said she had been sheltering elsewhere but had “FOMO” about not being with her friends, so she switched over in the brief lull between sirens.
Martine Berkowitz, a friend of Graber’s, also said the community around her was what made the disruption feel manageable. Sirens kept interrupting even basic tasks, she said, including her attempt to take a shower, which she tried five times.
“My friends live on my corner, so I’m doing great. We’re all together all the time,” she said. During the last Iran flare-up in June, she didn’t have that kind of built-in circle nearby, she said. “Being alone then was really rough.”
The mood wasn’t confined to Jaffa. Across the country, similar scenes played out in shelters and spread on social media, including one from Nachlaot in Jerusalem of people singing “For the Jews There was Light and Joy,” a Purim song marking the story’s turn after Haman’s plot to kill the Jews was thwarted. The parallel to the current moment, as the Jews once again sought to topple a Persian rule who had called for their death, was not lost on anyone.
In a sprawling underground parking lot turned shelter at Dizengoff Center in central Tel Aviv, Shabbat prayers gave way to dancing and songs of “Don’t Be Afraid, Oh Israel” and “Am Yisrael Chai.” Saul Sadka, who was there, posted a video of the revelers, captioning it “joy and stoicism.”
Sadka later said he was struck by the “sense of solidarity,” and noted that it was Shabbat Zachor, when Jews read the passage about Amalek, a nemesis that they are commanded never to forget. “People seem willing to suffer for a while if it means the defeat of the IRGC,” he said.
Another bomb shelter in Tel Aviv struck a less pious tone, turning into a makeshift night club with red lights, a DJ and people dancing.
In one video, one of hundreds of comedic shelter clips circulating online, a comedian quipped, “The nation of Israel lives” — but only as long as the shelter “has wifi and the iPads have battery.”
Natalie Silverlieb was in the mamak, the communal reinforced safe room on her building’s floor. She said the logistics of repeated alerts had become harder since she became a mother.
“Doing this with a baby is crazy,” she said. The room was packed, including other babies and dogs, and she and her partner tried to follow a system that would get their baby back to sleep quickly.
“I’m so, so, so exhausted,” she said. “When I was doing this on my own the last time, I could at least come back to my apartment and just lay on the couch. But now there’s no laying on the couch. It’s go, go, go.”
For Silverlieb, the uncertainty of the past few weeks hadn’t disappeared so much as changed shape. “The waiting for it to end is more stressful than the waiting for it to begin,” she said. “I just hope it ends quickly. It’s a lot, period.”
In a nearby grocery store, another siren, the 30th or so in as many hours, sent shoppers scrambling. In the residential building next door, the shelter downstairs was decrepit and doorless. Children played limbo with a strip of red cloth. One woman began pitching HAAT, a new, mostly Arab-run delivery service she said was giving Wolt a run for its money. A few people pulled out their phones to download the app, trading jokes about whether it would deliver to shelters, and during sirens. Because it is Ramadan, Muslims in Israel are doubly on edge, from fasting on top of the missiles.
Sasha, who lives in the building, said she was “half happy” the waiting was over. The repeated dashes up and down the stairs, she joked, were at least getting her to her daily goal of 10,000 steps. Still, she said, it “won’t help us if the [Iranian] regime doesn’t fall.”
A Ukrainian who grew up under Soviet rule, taught her what it meant to live without freedom, she said. “We want to see the Iranian people free and a better Middle East for everyone.”
Evyatar said he doubted the regime would fall “unless the Iranian citizens themselves finish the job.”
Ma’or, another neighbor, said he would “happily sit in my bomb shelter if it meant giving my Iranian friends, both in Iran and out, a chance at a normal life.” He pointed to a friend in Tehran who works as a tattoo artist, an illegal trade under the regime.
“I mean, he’s not even free to give someone a tattoo without going underground,” he said. “I’m baffled by the people cheering [on] the IRGC. People who say this war is illegal are out of their goddamn minds.”
Evyatar said he began Saturday uneasy, but grew calmer as the hours passed and he gauged the pattern of the strikes. The alerts came far more often than the 12-day war, but the blasts felt less intense. “At the beginning I felt scared, like it was June all over again.” Over time, he said, he has learned to tell the difference between the sounds of interceptions, shrapnel and direct impacts.
As he spoke, a loud boom hit outside, rattling the shelter and stopping the conversation. “That, for example, was a June sound,” he said.
It turned out to be shrapnel coming down not far away. The impact was part of a wider series of strikes across central Israel, including one that turned lethal in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, when a public bomb shelter was hit. Nine people were killed including multiple from the same family. Dozens more were wounded, and others still were unaccounted for.
In Beit Shemesh, the strike changed the atmosphere in a city that had so far heard only occasional sirens, during both this round and the last one.
Netanel Alkoby, a Beit Shemesh resident who spent 12 years in the reserves with the Home Front Command, said he has always taken alerts seriously, but that over time a degree of complacency still set in. The strike, he said, “changed our perspective a lot,” forcing him to be more careful, more on guard, and to treat every warning “with the utmost seriousness.”
In the underground shelter at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, a sign overhead read “the safest shelter in existence.” Patients hobbled in, some with casts and crutches. With doctors also sheltering there, patients used the moment to buttonhole them with questions.
One staffer watched a line of women form to speak to a physician. “Poor thing, he can’t even enjoy the siren in peace,” she said.
Back in the central Jaffa shelter, a couple in black leather and dark glasses stood apart from the banter around them.
“Any fear and terror that Israeli citizens are feeling right now is a direct result of this violent racist Islamophobic power hungry greedy fascist government,” said the woman, who declined to give her name, referring to the Netanyahu-led coalition.
Asked whether she thought attacking Iran was a bad idea, she said: “I think it’s a bad idea to attack anyone in 2026. We teach toddlers not to fight and here we have fully grown men doing this, dooming all of us.”
“It’s time we take the power from aging white men,” she said.
Nearby, Martine Berkowitz agreed — in part. “Yep, they are behaving like toddlers. And they are aging white men. Who are fighting evil brown men. If it brings freedom to Iran then it was worth it. But if it doesn’t, then it was all for nothing.”
The post Yet again, Israel’s public shelters become sites of camaraderie amid steep danger appeared first on The Forward.
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Netanyahu: ‘Our Forces Are Striking the Heart of Tehran With Increasing Strength’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israeli forces had “eliminated the dictator Ali Khamenei” along with dozens of senior officials of Iran’s regime during a statement delivered from the roof of the Kirya, Israel’s defense headquarters.
“Yesterday, we eliminated the dictator Khamenei. Along with him, dozens of senior officials from the oppressive regime were eliminated,” Netanyahu said after a meeting with the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the Director of Mossad. He added that he had issued instructions to continue the offensive.
According to Netanyahu, Israeli forces are “now striking at the heart of Tehran with increasing intensity,” a campaign he said will “increase further in the days to come.”
The Prime Minister also acknowledged the toll of the conflict on Israel, calling recent days “painful” and offering condolences to the families of victims in Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh, while wishing a speedy recovery to those injured.
Netanyahu emphasized that the operation mobilizes “the full power of the Israel Defense Forces, like never before,” in order to “guarantee our existence and our future.” He also highlighted US support, noting “the assistance of my friend, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, and of the American military.”
“This combination of forces allows us to do what I have hoped to accomplish for 40 years: strike the terrorist regime right in the face,” Netanyahu concluded. “I promised it — and we will keep our word.”