Senator John Kennedy and Arab American Advocate Maya Berry
U.S. Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, later fired pointed questions at Maya Berry, the Executive Director of the Arab American Institute at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes. The hearing was held on the rising trend of hate crimes but became contentious when Kennedy followed an accusation questioning her support for radical groups.
Kennedy asked Berry several times if she supported Hamas and Hezbollah, both organizations that are listed as foreign terrorist organizations. Berry denied any association with the organizations, yet Kennedy continued questioning, which would eventually end with the remark “You should hide your head in a bag.”.
Berry was horrified by the series of questions that seemed to exemplify the problem of hate and bigotry that the hearing was supposed to consider. She kept emphasizing that her point was that this line of questioning goes against what this hearing was for domestic hate crimes against the backdrop of foreign policy.
Aggressive questioning elicited protests from many advocacy groups. Among its attacks on Kennedy’s approach as weaponizing racial identity and encouragement of anti-Arabism and anti-Muslimism, the Council on American-Islamic Relations had cautioned against bringing him to the Senate floor. Engage Action, an advocacy group that champions Muslim Americans, also described the exchange as alarming and out of order.
Rights advocates have observed an upsurge in hate crimes targeting Muslims, Arabs, and Jews with the intensification of the Gaza conflict. In this regard, the thrust of the hearing was challenged by some senators who assailed its scope, deeming it inappropriate to broaden the discussion on anti-Semitism to the exclusion of focus on that tied up with the Gaza conflict.
Thus, the debate is far from over as Berry’s response and Kennedy’s comments have opened a more general discourse on the involvement of hate crimes with political rhetoric in the U.S.
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