Short answer: Yes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has consistently and publicly supported Israel, both before and after becoming U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary in 2025. He backed Israel's right to self-defense immediately after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, has repeatedly defended Israel against "genocide" accusations (most recently on Fox News in June 2026), and has used his HHS position to frame anti-Israel campus protests as antisemitism. As of August 2026, he is alive and currently serving in the Trump administration.
What RFK Jr. has actually said and done
- October 7, 2023: The day Hamas attacked Israel, Kennedy, then still seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, posted on X that the attack "must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state's right to self-defense," adding that the U.S. should "provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself, now," according to Newsweek.
- March 20, 2024: In a Reuters interview in Los Angeles, Kennedy said "any other nation" attacked the way Israel was on October 7 "would go and level it with aerial bombardment," calling Israel "a moral nation" for building the Iron Dome instead of immediately invading Gaza, as reported by the Times of Israel.
- 2024, during his independent presidential campaign: Kennedy told young voters it was "absurd" to call Israel an apartheid state, part of a broader pattern of rejecting apartheid and genocide framings of Israel's conduct, according to NewsNation.
- March 3, 2025: As HHS Secretary, Kennedy's department issued a press statement as part of a broader push against antisemitism on college campuses, stating that "antisemitism, like racism, is a spiritual and moral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history's most deadly plagues." The statement tied pro-Palestinian campus protest activity to what HHS characterized as "woke cancel culture," per the official HHS.gov release, with additional coverage from Jewish Currents.
- June 2026: As HHS Secretary, Kennedy told Fox News host Jesse Watters that accusations of Israeli "genocide" in Gaza were false, saying "if you want to see where a real genocide is happening, it's not in Israel, it's happening in all the nations around it." He pointed to the collapse of the Jewish population in Arab countries, from roughly 1 million in 1948 to about 15,000 today, and to declining Christian populations in the region, according to the Algemeiner and Matzav.
Context: a family history that goes back decades
Kennedy's pro-Israel record spans his time as an independent presidential candidate (2023-2024) and his current role as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary, a post he was confirmed to in February 2025 and still holds as of August 2026. There is also a family thread worth knowing. His father, Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., visited British Mandate Palestine as a journalist in 1948 and wrote sympathetically about the nascent Jewish state, a history documented by the Jewish Policy Center and Tablet Magazine. For balance, it is also a well-documented historical fact, not an opinion, that RFK Sr. was assassinated in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan, who cited RFK Sr.'s support for Israel, specifically arms sales, as his motive.
Some pro-Palestinian commentators have criticized Kennedy for what they describe as unconditional support of Israel. Beyond his general rejection of the "apartheid" label, we could not verify specific financial donations, AIPAC or pro-Israel PAC contributions, or boycott-related statements tied to him, so those claims are not included here.
The bottom line
The public record through August 2026 shows Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a consistent, vocal supporter of Israel, a position he held well before becoming HHS Secretary and has continued to express in that official capacity, including recent on-air pushback against "genocide" accusations. Shop Israel customers can accurately describe him as pro-Israel.
Wear your own support for Israel
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
