Florida state Sen. Randy Fine. Photo: Reuters

Florida state Sen. Randy Fine emerged victorious on Tuesday in the Republican primary election for the Sunshine State’s 6th Congressional District in the US Congress, making the firebrand conservative the overwhelming favorite to secure the highly-coveted seat to replace now-former Rep. Mike Waltz.

The congressional seat became vacant after Waltz stepped down to become the national security adviser for US President Donald Trump in the White House. Waltz had managed to secure reelection in November with 66 percent of the vote. 

Fine, who is Jewish, has established himself as a stalwart ally of Israel. In the year following the Hamas-led slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages during a cross-border invasion into southern Israel, Fine has spearheaded efforts to uproot antisemitism within the state of Florida. 

In August 2024, he chided Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for taking a trip to Ireland, repudiating the country as “antisemitic.”

“I was certainly disappointed to see not only folks go to what is clearly an antisemitic country that supports Muslim terror, but I was also disappointed that the game wasn’t cancelled, which it should have been,” Fine said. 

Ireland has been a fierce critic of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, even joining a legal case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice accusing the Jewish state of genocide in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The move, which came after the Irish government in May officially recognized a Palestinian state, led Israel to shutter its embassy in Dublin.

In August 2024, Fine launched an investigation into alleged antisemitic and pro-terrorist ideology within instructional materials at Florida public universities. Fine suggested that activist professors were using textbooks that were indoctrinating students with anti-Israel sentiment. 

“When we learned that Florida universities were using a factually inaccurate, openly antisemitic textbook, we realized there was a problem that had to be addressed,” Fine said. 

Following the New Year’s Day ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New Orleans, Fine raised eyebrows by repudiating Islam as a “fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”

“Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again. The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture,” Fine posted on X/Twitter. 

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US congratulated Fine for his primary victory on Tuesday.

“We are proud to support pro-Israel candidates who help strengthen and expand the US-Israel relationship. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics,” AIPAC, which endorsed Fine, posted on social media.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization that attempts to forge closer ties between the Jewish community and the Republican Party, touted Fine’s vigorous crusade against antisemitism within the Florida state legislature.

“Randy Fine is a warrior for his constituents and has served for years in the Florida legislature with distinction,” RJC wrote on X/Twitter. “Randy Fine will be a fierce advocate for the Jewish community in the House of Representatives. Importantly, he has led the fight and been the loudest voice against the rise of antisemitism in Florida and across the country.”

The post Pro-Israel Lawmaker Randy Fine Wins Florida GOP Primary, Favorite to Replace Trump Adviser Mike Waltz in Congress first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Palestinian terrorists surround hostage Arbel Yehoud, held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, on the day they hand her over to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

Israel on Thursday released 110 Palestinian prisoners after delaying the process due to outrage over the chaotic mobbing of freed Israeli hostages at a handover point in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed.

“Israel insists that the lessons be learned and that strict care be taken in the next phases regarding the safe return of our hostages,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas freed three Israeli and five Thai hostages after 482 days in captivity on Thursday, with the handovers taking place in both northern and southern Gaza.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, armed terrorists transferred the hostages to the Red Cross amid chaos — with people chanting for Hamas’s military wing, known as the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and was killed by Israeli forces a year later — while the hostages looked fearful and struggled to walk through the crowd.

WATCH: Arbel Yehoud – a defenseless young woman – is swarmed by a crowd of armed terrorists and Gazan civilians.

If this is just her last moment in captivity, imagine what the past 482 days have been like. #letthemgonow pic.twitter.com/3dlZIYfnWN

— Government Press Office (@GPOIsrael) January 30, 2025

Israeli civilians Arbel Yehud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80, were handed over by Hamas to representatives of the Red Cross in Khan Yunis. In photos and videos shared on social media, Yehud was seen scared as she walked through a chaotic crowd, surrounded by rifle-wielding militants, toward the Red Cross convoy.

After the incidents, Netanyahu, along with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, ordered a delay in the release of the Palestinian terrorists scheduled to be freed under the Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas until the safe exit of hostages in the next phases of the agreement could be assured.

Jerusalem demanded that mediators Qatar and Egypt, who helped negotiate the ceasefire, “guarantee the safety of our hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, describing the “horrific scenes” of Yehud and Mozes being taunted and mobbed.

“This is further proof of the unimaginable cruelty of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the statement continued.

Following Netanyahu’s demand, however, “the mediators have conveyed a commitment, according to which the safe exit of our hostages who are due to be released in the next phases has been assured,” his office said.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli soldier Agam Berger, 20, who was kidnapped from an Israeli military field observers’ base in Nahal Oz, was transferred into Red Cross custody following a Hamas handover ceremony in northern Gaza.

All three Israelis were among the 251 hostages who were kidnapped during the Hamas-led rampage across southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were murdered, on Oct. 7, 2023.

The five released Thais were all foreign agricultural workers who were also taken hostage during the Oct. 7 onslaught. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) named them as Thaenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakhan, Sriaoun Watchara, Saethao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak.

Returnee Gadi Mozes (80), reuniting with his family at the Ichilov Medical Center.

Maayan Toaf, GPO pic.twitter.com/pGjYes430q

— Government Press Office (@GPOIsrael) January 30, 2025

As part of the ongoing Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, 110 Palestinian prisoners were released in the third hostage-for-prisoner swap. During the first 42 days of the agreement, Hamas pledged to release 33 hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, where they have largely been imprisoned for involvement in terrorist activities.

Of those set to be released in the coming weeks, 32 were sentenced to life and 48 were serving long sentences, including Zakaria Zubeidi, Mohammad Abu Warda, and Sami Jaradat, according to Israel’s Channel 12 News.

Zubeidi, who led the Palestinian faction Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin and briefly escaped from Israel’s Gilboa Prison in 2021, will not be deported due to his conviction on terrorism offenses rather than murder, and is expected to return to the West Bank.

Abu Warda and Jaradat, responsible for attacks that killed 66 Israelis in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are scheduled to be deported and banned from re-entering Israeli territory.

The post Israel Releases Palestinian Terrorists After Delay Over ‘Horrific’ Gaza Mobbing of Freed Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US President Donald Trump (R) in the Oval of the White House in January 2025. Photo: Fortune via Reuters Connect

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a highly anticipated executive order aimed at combating campus antisemitism and holding pro-terror extremists accountable for the harassment of Jewish students, fulfilling a promise he made while campaigning for a second term in office.

Continuing work started started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — the “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement.

Additionally, it initiates a full review of the explosion of campus antisemitism on US colleges across the country after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a convulsive moment in American history to which the previous administration struggled to respond during the final year and a half of its tenure.

“The report submitted by the Attorney General under his section shall additionally include an inventory and analysis of all court cases, as of the date of the report, against or involving institutions of higher education alleging civil-rights violations related to arising from post-Oct. 7, 2023, campus antisemitism and indicate whether the Attorney General intends to or has taken any such action with respect to such matters, including filing statements of interests or intervention,” the order says. “The report submitted by the Secretary of Education under this section shall additionally include an inventory and an analysis of all Title VI complaints and administrative actions, including K-12 education, related to antisemitism — pending or resolved after Oct. 7, 2023 — within the Department’s Office for Civil Rights.”

Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction on college campuses.

US Jewish civil rights groups celebrated the action as progress towards ending a situation in higher education that has been described as everything from “Judenrein” to a “crisis” that is without precedent in the modern United States.

“We welcome this effort by President Trump to put the full force of the federal government against rising antisemitism in our country,” Anti-Defamation League chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Combating antisemitism requires a whole-of-government approach, and we are eager to see every federal agency and department take concrete measures to address this scourge.”

Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said: “These executive orders are a home run. They demonstrate that President Trump is fully committed to protecting Jewish students from campus antisemitism. This bodes very well for the coming years.”

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) also commented on the news, saying, “We endorse without hesitation the instruction to identify statutes to prevent discrimination against Jews, and to apply all existing laws to address civil rights violations relating to antisemitism in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack against Israel.”

Campus antisemitism was the subject of a major recent report by several committees of the US House of Representatives that accused college officials of choosing to protect their brands over fighting anti-Jewish hatred.

“The committee found that so-called university leaders deliberately chose to withhold support from Jewish communities on campus, demonstrating a refusal to address the hostile environments at their institutions,” the report said. “Jewish students, faculty, and staff often felt abandoned by administrators’ passive and muted responses to the explosion of antisemitic hate on campus. The committee’s investigation found that these failures to act were not mere oversights but intentional decisions.”

The report added that some schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania, pantomimed corrective action to disruptive behavior, assuring the public that it took rules violations, including the commandeering of campus property with “Gaza Solidarity Encampments,” seriously — but it punished very few students for misconduct and those it did were given slaps on the wrist, according to critics.

Egregious conduct which prompted civil litigation evaded disciplinary action, it continued, explaining that nearly 100 students who participated in an encampment which barred Jewish students from accessing sections of campus at the University of California, Los Angeles “signed resolution agreements allowing them to escape disciplinary consequences” and “none were disciplined.”

In Wednesday’s executive order, Trump denounced the previous administration for refusing to handle the problem.

“This failure is unacceptable and ends today,” he said. “It shall be the policy of the United States to combat antisemitism vigorously, using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘This Failure Ends Today’: Trump Issues Major Executive Order on Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.