Israelis transformed “a tiny sliver of swamp and desert” with few natural resources into “an agricultural juggernaut and a global economic and technological superpower,” Kennedy wrote.
By United with Israel Staff
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a sweeping defense of Israel and the Jewish people on Friday, praising the Jewish state’s democratic and technological achievements while accusing Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood of fueling a global campaign of antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda.
Kennedy’s lengthy statement came in response to intense media criticism over comments he made while campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Kennedy had argued that scientific and intellectual achievement across the Arab world had dramatically declined and blamed the spread of political Islam and Muslim Brotherhood ideology.
Critics accused Kennedy of making sweeping and inaccurate claims about Arabs. Kennedy responded that his target was not Arabs or Muslims, but Islamism.
“My speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism,” Kennedy wrote, describing it as “a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Much of Kennedy’s response focused on Israel, antisemitism and what he described as the stark contrast between the Jewish state’s accomplishments and the ideology promoted by Islamist movements.
“Genocidal hatred against ALL Jews and Christians and other minorities is foundational to Islamism,” Kennedy wrote.
He argued that Islamist antisemitism long predates the modern State of Israel and cited Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb’s writings about Jews.
“Only in the West does Jew hatred pretend to require the alibi of Palestine or hide behind anti-Zionism,” Kennedy wrote.
Kennedy accused Islamist movements of turning Israel into a global scapegoat, arguing that Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah divert attention from their own failures by blaming Jews, Zionists and the United States.
Turning to Gaza, Kennedy accused Hamas of squandering massive amounts of international assistance on weapons, tunnels and terrorism while repressing Palestinians under its rule. He said Hamas had indoctrinated Palestinian children with “genocidal hatred of ALL Jews,” while using civilians as human shields and placing military infrastructure in civilian areas.
Kennedy contrasted that record with Israel, which he described as a remarkable economic, technological and democratic success story.
He wrote that Israelis transformed “a tiny sliver of swamp and desert” with few natural resources into “an agricultural juggernaut and a global economic and technological superpower.”
Despite being surrounded by enemies, Kennedy wrote, Israelis “turned the barren landscape into a vibrant, pluralistic democracy where Jews and Arabs vote as they please; worship according to their convictions; serve beside each other in the judiciary, the army, and political leadership; and enjoy equal rights.”
“As the only democracy in the Mideast, Israel is a robust and heroic outpost for freedom and Western values,” he declared.
Kennedy also devoted a significant portion of his statement to Jewish contributions to science, medicine, technology, business and Western civilization.
“There is no ethnic or religious group that has contributed more than Jews to the welfare of humanity or to the advancement of liberal democracy,” he wrote.
“Relative to their proportion of the population, the astonishing contributions by Jews have been breathtaking.”
Kennedy highlighted the disproportionate number of Jewish Nobel laureates despite Jews comprising only a tiny fraction of the world’s population and cited figures including polio vaccine pioneers Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, physicists Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, and Jewish entrepreneurs and executives behind some of America’s largest technology companies.
“In a rational universe, wouldn’t non-Jews be expected to celebrate these contributions with gratitude?” Kennedy asked.
“Why does the world hate Jews and embrace Islamists?”
“The answer, of course, is a sophisticated mass propaganda campaign that ignores evidence and inverts reality to make Israel a global villain,” he wrote.
Kennedy accused the Muslim Brotherhood of building a powerful propaganda apparatus over decades and alleged that funding from Iran and Gulf states later amplified it on a global scale. He argued that the campaign has helped convince Western activists to embrace accusations of genocide against Israel while overlooking the ideology and conduct of Hamas and other Islamist groups.
The remarks also carry particular political significance because Kennedy delivered his original speech while campaigning for Rogers, who faces Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Tuesday’s closely watched Michigan Senate election.
El-Sayed has emerged as one of the country’s most outspoken political critics of Israel. He has called Israel “not actually our friend,” said it is not a genuine U.S. ally and accused the Jewish state of “genocide” and “war crimes.”
Kennedy devoted the closing section of his statement directly to El-Sayed, challenging him over his alleged connections to Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations and questioning whether his recent disavowal of the Brotherhood went far enough.
The issue has followed El-Sayed throughout the closing weeks of the campaign. His half-sister wrote in 2012 that “my family has long been MB” and separately described their biological mother’s “activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early ’70s while she was in college.” El-Sayed has repeatedly denied having ties to the Brotherhood, noting that he was raised by his father and stepmother and describing his half-sister’s statements about their mother as “hearsay.”
When directly asked at an October town hall whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed answered, “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” before arguing that the question reflected suspicion of him because of his Muslim faith.
Kennedy dismissed the response as insufficient.
“A disavowal that names nothing and condemns nothing is a disavowal in name only,” he wrote.
“Why can’t El-Sayed give us a full-throated and detailed condemnation of this terror group, and disavow also its poisonous ideology without ambiguity?” Kennedy asked. “Americans shouldn’t have to worry whether a U.S. Senate candidate has loyalty to an ideology that openly hates our country and has vowed to destroy it.”
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