RFK Jr. doubles down on anti-Islamism comments, lauds Jewish contributions to world

US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday defended himself against accusations of anti-Arab racism over a speech he gave last week, while doubling down on his claim that Arabs don’t produce science and comparing them to the Jews, whom he lauded as having contributed more to the welfare of humanity than any other ethnic group.

In a post to his X account that stretched for over 3,700 words, Kennedy said that “leftist mainstream media outlets” that were outraged at his earlier remarks  “omitted critical context, presumably to bestow plausibility on their accusations that my statements were racist and Islamophobic.”

In his remarks on October 26 at a campaign event in Michigan where Republican Mike Rogers is running for the US Senate against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, Kennedy falsely claimed that Arabs had not won major international awards and “don’t produce” science and literature.

“My speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism (also known as “Islamofascism” or “Political Islam”), a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood,” Kennedy wrote in the post.

He lashed Islamism as “intensely anti-American, anti-Western, and hostile to modernity.”

Kennedy then compared “the Arabs’ dismal record of intellectual achievement in modern times with that of their closest cousins, the Jews, nearly all of whom live in democratic societies with laws that separate religion and politics.”

Leftist mainstream media outlets piled on this week to express outrage at my observation, during a speech in Grand Rapids for Mike Rogers, about the troubling dearth of scientific output from the world’s 22 Arab nations over the past five decades. These reporters —… pic.twitter.com/opf2MO3t8S

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 30, 2026

Noting the short list of Muslim Nobel Prize winners, he added that Jews make up just 0.2 percent of the world population but some 200 have won the award in science.

He also noted that “Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime bonded with early Islamists over their shared Jew hatred” and that the Muslim Brotherhood engaged in propaganda and espionage on behalf of the Nazis.

Islamists’ activity against Jews, he wrote, has continued to this day.

“The massive influx of money from Iran and the Gulf States starting in the 1990s turned this operation into an amplifier of unmatched power that makes Goebbels look like a piker,” he wrote.

Pointing to the Gaza Strip, which “remains a stunted and stagnant, impoverished society under tyrannical oppression, with no free speech or other basic freedoms,” Kennedy contrasted its “failures” with Israel, “a tiny sliver of swamp and desert 1/600th the size of its Arab neighbors, that blossomed into an agricultural juggernaut and a global economic and technological superpower.”

Praising the equal rights of Jews, Arabs, women, and the gay community, he said: “Israel is a robust and heroic outpost for freedom and Western values.

“And Israel is merely a nugget among the bounties bestowed by Jews on Western civilization,” he continued. “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.”

Kennedy gave a list of Jewish figures with famous contributions, among them Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Jesus Christ, who, he pointed out, “were all Jewish.”

Kennedy also gave a long list of “things Jews don’t do,” including “suicide bombings, rape gangs, beheading people, killing gay people” and “lynching women for wearing makeup or showing hair,” all of which he called “gifts that Islamism has bestowed on the world, along with closed minds, poverty, starvation, ignorance, oppression, and violence.”

The comparison, he said, sparks the question, “Why does the world hate Jews and embrace Islamists?”

The answer, he said, lies in “a sophisticated mass propaganda campaign” led by the Muslim Brotherhood as part of its “strategy for taking over Western nations.”

“Genocidal hatred against ALL Jews and Christians and other minorities is foundational to Islamism,” he argued. “Only in the West does Jew hatred pretend to require the alibi of Palestine or hide behind anti-Zionism.”

Kennedy’s initial speech in Michigan drew a sharp response from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which documents hate against Muslims and Arabs in the US.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vile anti-Arab rant is a textbook display of unvarnished racism and bigotry,” the council said last week.

US rights advocates have raised concerns over escalating rhetoric against Muslims, Arabs, immigrants, and ethnic minorities by US President Donald Trump and his allies during the ongoing midterm election campaign.