Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) posted the following on Twitter/X Thursday night:
It’s no longer Republicans vs. Democrats.
It’s Americans who love this country vs. terrorists who want to destroy it.
— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) August 13, 2026
Fine appeared to be putting himself on Team America against both, or either, the leftwing, including a new crop of democratic socialists who keep winning Democratic primaries, or also perhaps Palestinians (maybe Hamas specifically, maybe not), who the congressman does not like and has even compared to dogs (for starters).
Fine is a vocal Zionist who has repeatedly called for the total destruction of Gaza, has dehumanized Palestinians, has said all Muslims must be “destroyed,” and dismissed the deaths of innocent non-combatants such as women and children.
Which leads to the obvious question: Who is an actual “terrorist,” here?
When a Twitter/X user shared a photo of a dead baby—the user referenced the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although the 2012 photo originated from the Syrian Civil War—in June 2021 with Fine, then a member of the Florida State House, asking how he sleeps at night, Fine responded:
Quite well, actually! Thanks for the pic!
— Randy Fine (@VoteRandyFine) June 4, 2021
“Thanks” for showing him a dead child.
Fine has called to attack Gaza’s schoolchildren in the name of targeting Hamas:
So blow up the schools. No mercy. #BombsAway https://t.co/lLQTFbQS13
— Randy Fine (@VoteRandyFine) August 5, 2024
He’s described Palestinians as less than animals and used it as justification for the blanket bombing of Gaza; implied mass extermination of Palestinians and called for genocide more times than I can probably chronicle here.
Targeting an ethnic or religious population en masse for his own political agenda.
There’s a name for that.
“What distinguishes terrorism is the willful and calculated choice of innocents as targets,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote in his book published forty years ago, Terrorism: How the West Can Win.
Bibi told William F. Buckley on his Firing Line television show in 1986:
“What terrorists do is target the innocent deliberately and therefore my definition of terrorism is the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, maiming and menacing of innocence of civilians for political goals.” [Emphasis added]
That’s Fine’s views on Israel-Palestine in a nutshell. As an elected U.S. federal representative, he has called for the use of terrorist tactics by Israel and the United States on many occasions and without hesitation.
Osama Bin Laden was not in New York City or Washington DC on 9/11, but is still considered the mastermind of the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Fine is not in Gaza, holding a weapon or bombing children personally, but he is a major Washington mind behind it, votes for it, and cheers it with vigor—fitting to almost a tee Netanyahu’s four decade old definition of what makes one a terrorist.
Some might balk at my use of Netanyahu, who at the time of these quotes was Israel’s United Nations ambassador, a decade shy of becoming prime minister, and who since has been accused of being a terrorist and war criminal himself many times.
My point here is not to shrug Netanyahu off as some random hypocrite, but that in his role as UN ambassador and later prime minister, he was willing to publicly lie as long as it was beneficial to the Israeli state.
As prime minister today, Netanyahu would never hold the Israeli Defense Force to any objective definition of terrorism, and if you asked him if Fine was a terrorist he would almost definitely say no because the congressman is pro-Israel, which to him could never be terrorism.
But it still doesn’t change the fact that Bibi once offered a reasonable definition of that term, and according to his lights, Randy Fine is a terrorist.
Netanyahu’s old definitions also line up nicely with plain, old dictionary definitions.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “terrorism” as “violent action or threats designed to cause fear among ordinary people, in order to achieve political aims.”
Merriam-Webster defines “terror” as “violence or the threat of violence used as a weapon of intimidation or coercion” and adds “especially: violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population.” [Emphasis original]
We know Fine appreciates “pics” of dead Arab kids.
By the definitions at one time of Benjamin Netanyahu, Cambridge, and Merriam-Webster the “terrorists” Fine claims to be battling more accurately define himself.
Here’s one more definition from another major world leader.
President Ronald Reagan said in June 1985 in response to the TWA airliner hijacking, “When terrorism strikes, civilization itself is under attack…If we permit terrorism to succeed anywhere it will spread like a cancer eating away at civilized societies…”
Of course, both the vintage Netanyahu and Reagan quotes are about different actors or potential actors committing different terrorist attacks at different places in time.
But all of these descriptions and definitions, from both men and dictionaries, are in the same vein.
Reagan added, “This barbarism is abhorrent and all of those who support it, encourage it and profit from it are abhorrent.”
“They are barbarians,” the president finished.
