Civil rights groups condemn senator’s questioning of Arab American witness | US Congress

A congressional listening to on hate crimes drew expenses of the bigotry it was meant to handle after a Republican senator instructed the feminine Muslim head of a thinktank to “conceal your head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

John Kennedy, the GOP senator for Louisiana, drew condemnation from Democrats in addition to Muslim, Jewish and civil liberties teams for the comment, aimed toward Maya Berry, the chief director of the Arab American Institute, at a listening to staged by the Senate judiciary committee.

The proceedings witnessed additional disruption when Ted Cruz, the Republican senator for Texas, was interrupted by a spectator protesting the variety of Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. “You speak in regards to the fucking Jews and the Israelis. Speak in regards to the 40,000. Discuss all these individuals. Why is it about antisemitism?” the protester shouted, earlier than being ejected from the chamber.

Cruz responded: “We now have an illustration of antisemitism. We now have an illustration of the hate.”

Republicans criticised the theme of Tuesday’s listening to – set by the committee’s Democratic chair, Dick Durbin – for conflating antisemitism with bigotry towards Muslims, Arabs and different teams.

“The aim was to have a listening to about why it’s so onerous to go to high school in case you’re Jewish,” mentioned Lindsey Graham, the Republican rating member of the committee and the senator for South Carolina. “Should you’re Jewish, you’re being knocked down. You’re being spat on. It’s simply utterly uncontrolled. This isn’t the listening to we’re getting, so we’ll work with what we’ve received.”

A Republican-led subcommittee within the Home of Representatives has already staged a sequence of extremely charged hearings centered on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses following Hamas’s lethal assault on Israel final October, which noticed round 1,200 individuals killed and 250 taken hostage, and which triggered a devastating ongoing Israeli army retaliation.

The Home hearings prompted the resignations of two college heads after they gave responses to questions on their establishments’ insurance policies on requires genocide towards Jews that have been deemed insufficiently condemnatory.

Graham tried to enter comparable territory when he requested Berry whether or not she believed that it was aim of Hamas, the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah or Iran to destroy the one Jewish state. Berry answered that “these are difficult questions”.

That finally led to Berry’s hostile alternate with Kennedy, who requested her: “You help Hamas, do you not?”

“Hamas is a overseas terrorist group that I don’t help,” Berry replied. “However you asking the chief director of the Arab American Institute that query very a lot places the give attention to the difficulty of hate in our nation.”

When Kennedy adopted up by asking whether or not she supported Hezbollah or Iran, Berry answered: “Once more, I discover this line of questioning terribly disappointing.”

Ending his interrogation by expressing “disappointment” at Berry’s unwillingness to declare outright opposition to the three named entities, Kennedy declared: “It is best to conceal your head in a bag.”

Invited by Durbin to answer the outburst, Berry mentioned: “It’s regrettable that I, as I sit right here, have skilled the very concern that we’re making an attempt to cope with at the moment. This has been, regrettably, an actual disappointment, however very a lot a sign of the hazard to our democratic establishments that we’re in now. And I deeply remorse that.”

The judiciary committee – with Durbin’s approval – later endorsed Berry’s response by posting it on X, with accompanying commentary studying: “A Senate Republican instructed an Arab American civil rights chief that ‘you must conceal your head in a bag.’ We is not going to amplify that horrible clip. However we WILL amplify the witness’s highly effective response calling it out.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) accused Kennedy and different Republicans of treating Berry with hostility.

“Maya Berry went earlier than the committee to debate hate crimes. Each Ms. Berry and the subject ought to have been handled with the respect and seriousness they deserve,” mentioned Robert McCaw, Cair’s authorities affairs director. “As an alternative, Sen Kennedy and others selected to be an instance of the bigotry Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims have confronted in latest months and years.”

Anthony Romero, govt director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned what he referred to as a “discriminatory and vitriolic assault” on Berry.

“To make use of a listening to in regards to the disturbing rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and antisemitic hate crimes to launch private and discriminatory assaults on an skilled witness they’ve invited to testify is each outrageous and inappropriate,” he mentioned.

Sheila Katz, chief govt officer of the Nationwide Council of Jewish Girls, referred to as Berry’s therapy “heartbreaking”.

“[T]he solely Muslim witness confronted biased questions on supporting Hamas & Hezbollah regardless of her clear condemnations,” she wrote on X. “This listening to ought to fight hate, not perpetuate it. The Senate should do higher.”