GOP Rep Randy Fine is not just a threat to Muslims--he also called for violence against Christians

Religious and racial supremacy are same form of hate

GOP Rep. Randy Fine is back in the news for yet more of his anti-Muslim hate. This time Fine posted over the weekend, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

This is nothing for the AIPAC backed, Netanyahu loving Fine who has peddled anti-Muslim hate for years. In fact, it was just in December that he called for cleansing American of all Muslims writing, “Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”

Fine understands that one third of Muslims are African American. Racial and religious supremacy are intertwined with bigots like Fine. Plus he knows that anti-Muslim and anti-Black hate plays well with the GOP and right-wing media—which is backed up by Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar demanding she leave the country.

Fine’s incitement of violence against Muslim Americans must be called out. But for some reason the corporate media—and the GOP--have given Fine a pass on his repeated calls for the extermination and ethnic cleansing of Christians living in the West Bank and Gaza. This type of incitement could lead to violence against Christians in America--which Fine knows.

For starters, Fine is well versed in the Middle East and understands there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians—of which nearly 50,000 live in the West Bank. That means Fine gets that he when is demonizing Palestinians and even calling for “nuking” them all, that includes the killing of Christians as well. If not, Fine would have made it clear he only seeks to exterminate Muslims.

But he never does. And that is because Fine believes all Christian and Muslim Palestinians are evil. In fact, he literally said “the Palestinian cause is an evil one.”

Viewing Palestinians as evil is why Fine had advocated for exterminating all Christian and Muslim Palestinians. For example, in December, Fine said about Palestinians you don’t make peace with them, “I think you destroy them first.” Same goes for Gaza where Fine called for “nuking” Gaza to force them to surrender and called for intentionally starving Palestinians in Gaza until Israeli hostages were released.

Fine knows there is a small but robust Christian community in Gaza. In fact, the Israeli military made international headlines during the Gaza war when the Pope condemned them for killing Christians sheltering in a Gaza church. At the time, the Pope expressed “profound sorrow for the Israeli army’s attack on the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City” which killed three Christians and seriously wounded others. Yet where was Fine’s denunciation of Christians being slaughtered?! Nowhere.

And as a candidate for Congress last year, Fine declared that his first bill in Congress would be to not only be to expel all Christian and Muslim Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel. Yes, Fine supports ethnic cleansing of Christians—as well as Muslims. However, when he appears in corporate media he is never pressed on his viciously anti-Christian mindset.

While Fine’s views are despicable and repugnant, they line up perfectly with the extremist members of Netanyahu’s government—who are also religious supremacists who consider Christians and Muslims as inferior. One of the most visible Jewish supremacists in Netanyahu’s regime is Itamar Ben-Gvir, a man convicted by an Israeli court of supporting a far right Jewish terrorist organization and incitement of hate against Christian and Muslim Arabs--including calling for killing them. Yes, that is the man Netanyahu invited into his cabinet and who your tax dollars go to support.

Both Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—like Fine—oppose Christian and Muslim Palestinians from having self-determination in the West Bank or Gaza simply because of their religion. Indeed, their goal is the removal of all Christians and Muslims in both places so that both can be Jewish only enclaves just like the settlements in the West Bank.

In fact, it was just on Sunday that the Netanyahu government approved steps to confiscate more Palestinian land in the West Bank to construct more Jewish only settlements. As Smotrich gleefully declared after the new policy was adopted, “We are continuing the revolution of settlement and strengthening our hold across all parts of our land.” “Our hold” of the land he is referring to is the Jewish supremacist vision that excludes Christians and Muslims.

It’s this bigoted mindset that fuels why Israeli settlers are increasingly targeting Palestinians in the West Bank—including Christian villages. Indeed, this past summer was some of the worst settler terrorism targeting the Palestinian Christian village of Taybeh in the West Bank. The Jewish extremist settlers set fire to homes, olive groves, and key religious and cultural landmarks, including the Byzantine cemetery and the 5th-century Al-Khader Church. Those attacks injured 58 Palestinians and displaced 67 Palestinians in just a two week period, “deepening an already ongoing process of ethnic cleansing throughout the entirety of the West Bank.”

In January, Father Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of Christ the Redeemer church in Taybeh raised alarms that the Israeli settlers are increasingly “starting to occupy more land, grazing their cows and sheep on our land, and also setting fire to cars.” And they are backed by the rhetoric of people like Randy Fine—who parrots the hate of the Jewish supremacist settlers who view Christians and Muslims as inferior.

Randy Fine is a religious supremacist the same way we have white supremacists in the US who view all non-whites as inferior and as a threat. However, dismissing Fine as simply an anti-Muslim bigot is a mistake. His history of calling for Christian Palestinians to be “destroyed,” “nuked” and “starved” is beyond alarming.

This incitement of violence by Fine should raise concerns for the Christian community in the United States. After all, do you really think Fine only views Christians in the Middle East with such hatred?!

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