A Senate Republican badgered an Arab American activist Tuesday during a congressional hearing about hate crimes with questions about whether she supported terrorist organizations, finally telling her that she should \u201chide your head in a bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana questioned Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, asking her whether she supported Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran as she repeatedly told him no. Berry tried to explain how assuming that an Arab American would support a foreign terrorist organization or state was an example of the kind of thinking that leads to hate crimes but was repeatedly cut off by Kennedy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect a direct racist attack,\u201d Berry told The Washington Post on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kennedy\u2019s office did not immediately respond Wednesday to requests for comment from The Post.<\/p>\n
Kennedy questioned Berry as part of a hearing titled \u201cA Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America.\u201d The other witnesses who testified were Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, and Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate.<\/p>\n
The hearing came nearly a year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed about 1,200 people and sparked an ongoing Israeli military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Hate crimes against Arabs and Jews have spiked in the United States. Berry, who co-chairs the Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights hate crimes task force, told lawmakers that while hate crimes ticked up 7 percent between 2022 and last year, those against Arabs and Jews spiked by 73 percent and 58 percent, respectively.<\/p>\n
Perhaps anticipating questions like Kennedy\u2019s, Berry encouraged senators, despite their concerns about the Oct. 7 attacks, to focus on \u201cthe increase in hate crimes our country has experienced for nearly the last decade and the need for a whole-of-society approach that can effectively stem the tide of all hate targeting all communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy focusing on hate crime statistics, the federal government\u2019s role in hate crime enforcement, and recommendations for policy remedies, I hope my testimony can help inform our collective response to combat all forms of hate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kennedy did not take her up on her suggestion. Instead, one of his first questions to her was \u201cYou support Hamas, do you not?\u201d causing murmurs in the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenator, oddly enough, I\u2019m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way,\u201d Berry replied.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u200b\u201dLet\u2019s start with a yes or no,\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support, but you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country,\u201d she said to applause from the audience.<\/p>\n
Kennedy then asked if she supported Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia based in Lebanon that the United States has classified as a terrorist organization. Berry told him that she found his questions \u201cextraordinarily disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t support violence, whether it\u2019s Hezbollah, Hamas or any other entity that invokes it, so, no sir,\u201d Berry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t bring yourself to say no, can you?\u201d Kennedy replied with a smile. \u201cYou just can\u2019t bring yourself to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy then asked her if she supported Iran and \u201ctheir hatred of Jews?\u201d Berry said no.<\/p>\n
Kennedy asked Berry about her criticizing the United States for cutting off funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees. The United States did so because Israel in January alleged that a dozen of the agency\u2019s 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. In April, an independent review found that Israel had not provided evidence that a significant number of UNRWA\u2019s workers were tied to militant groups, while the leader of the review group called the agency \u201cindispensable and irreplaceable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kennedy wrapped up his questioning by returning to where he started.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me ask you one more time, you support Hamas, don\u2019t you? You support UNRWA and Hamas, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s exceptionally disappointing that you\u2019re looking at an Arab American witness before you and saying you support Hamas,\u201d Berry said. \u201cI do not support Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what\u2019s disappointing to me? You can\u2019t bring yourself to say don\u2019t support UNRWA, you don\u2019t support Hamas, you don\u2019t support Hezbollah and you don\u2019t support Iran,\u201d Kennedy said, incorrectly. \u201cYou should hide your head in a bag.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd gasped.<\/p>\n
Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) gave Berry an opportunity to respond to Kennedy\u2019s comments. Asked if she wanted to say anything, Berry said that it was \u201cregrettable that I, as I sit here, have experienced the very issue that we\u2019re attempting to deal with today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe introduction of foreign policy is not how we keep Arab Americans or Jewish Americans or Muslim Americans or Black people or Asian Americans \u2014 anybody safe,\u201d she added. \u201cThis has been regrettably a real disappointment but very much an indication of the danger to our democratic institutions that we\u2019re in now.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Berry told The Post that the hearing was about the increase in hate crimes in recent years, not just against Arabs and Jews and not just since the Oct. 7 attacks. She said she tried to stay focused on that because it\u2019s important for lawmakers who have oversight power over the Justice Department to know what\u2019s going on, all the more so because of debunked rumors of immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets and threats of violence that followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the middle of seeing that right now unfold with Haitian American communities,\u201d Berry said.<\/p>\n
Instead, the hearing became mired in discussing foreign policy, she said, adding that Kennedy and other lawmakers hijacked the conversation from talking about hate crimes but also used the same kind of racist rhetoric that leads to hate crimes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am genuinely worried about our democratic institutions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A Senate Republican badgered an Arab American activist Tuesday during a congressional hearing about hate crimes with questions about whether she supported terrorist organizations, finally telling her that she should \u201chide your head in a bag.\u201d Sen. John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana questioned Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry during a Senate Judiciary Committee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}