A congressional hearing on hate crimes drew charges of the bigotry it was meant to address after a Republican senator told the female Muslim head of a thinktank to “hide your head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
John Kennedy, the GOP senator for Louisiana, drew condemnation from Democrats as well as Muslim, Jewish and civil liberties groups for the remark, aimed at Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, at a hearing staged by the Senate judiciary committee.
The proceedings witnessed further disruption when Ted Cruz, the Republican senator for Texas, was interrupted by a spectator protesting the number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. “You talk about the fucking Jews and the Israelis. Talk about the 40,000. Talk about all these people. Why is it about antisemitism?” the protester shouted, before being ejected from the chamber.
Cruz responded: “We now have a demonstration of antisemitism. We have a demonstration of the hate.”
Republicans criticised the theme of Tuesday’s hearing – set by the committee’s Democratic chair, Dick Durbin – for conflating antisemitism with bigotry against Muslims, Arabs and other groups.
“The goal was to have a hearing about why it’s so hard to go to school if you’re Jewish,” said Lindsey Graham, the Republican ranking member of the committee and the senator for South Carolina. “If you’re Jewish, you’re being knocked down. You’re being spat on. It is just completely out of control. This is not the hearing we’re getting, so we’ll work with what we’ve got.”
Hate Crimes on Campus
A Republican-led subcommittee in the House of Representatives has already staged a series of highly charged hearings focused on the rise of antisemitism on university campuses following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last October, which saw around 1,200 people killed and 250 taken hostage, and which triggered a devastating ongoing Israeli military retaliation.
The House hearings prompted the resignations of two university heads after they gave responses to questions about their institutions’ policies on calls for genocide against Jews that were deemed insufficiently condemnatory.
Kennedy’s Line of Questioning
Graham tried to enter similar territory when he asked Berry whether she believed that it was goal of Hamas, the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah or Iran to destroy the only Jewish state. Berry answered that “these are complicated questions”.
That eventually led to Berry’s hostile exchange with Kennedy, who asked her: “You support Hamas, do you not?”
“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” Berry replied. “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.”
When Kennedy followed up by asking whether she supported Hezbollah or Iran, Berry answered: “Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing.”
Finishing his interrogation by expressing “disappointment” at Berry’s unwillingness to declare outright opposition to the three named entities, Kennedy declared: “You should hide your head in a bag.”
Invited by Durbin to respond to the outburst, Berry said: “It’s regrettable that I, as I sit here, have experienced the very issue that we’re attempting to deal with today. This has been, regrettably, a real disappointment, but very much an indication of the danger to our democratic institutions that we’re in now. And I deeply regret that.”
Condemnation of Kennedy’s Remarks
“Maya Berry went before the committee to discuss hate crimes. Both Ms. Berry and the topic should have been treated with the respect and seriousness they deserve,” said Robert McCaw, Cair’s government affairs director. “Instead, Sen Kennedy and others chose to be an example of the bigotry Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims have faced in recent months and years.”
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned what he called a “discriminatory and vitriolic attack” on Kennedy.
“To use a hearing about the disturbing rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and antisemitic hate crimes to launch personal and discriminatory attacks on an expert witness they’ve invited to testify is both outrageous and inappropriate,” he said.
Sheila Katz, chief executive officer of the National Council of Jewish Women, called Berry’s treatment “heartbreaking”.
“[T]he only Muslim witness faced biased questions about supporting Hamas & Hezbollah despite her clear condemnations,” she wrote on X. “This hearing should combat hate, not perpetuate it. The Senate must do better.”
Louisiana Officials React
Kennedy was not the only Republican senator on the panel to cut off Berry.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked each witness if the goal of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is to destroy the Jewish state.
Berry responded that Graham’s questions were about complicated international issues, not about hate crimes.
Graham interrupted: “That’s the most ridiculous testimony ever given in this committee. If you think it’s complicated to figure out that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want to kill all the Jews, I should not listen to anything else you’ve got to say. And I won’t.”
Graham criticized the Judiciary committee’s Democratic majority for expanding the hearing to hate crimes and not focusing solely on antisemitism at universities.
Republicans have made an election-year issue about the Israeli war against Hamas-controlled areas of Palestinians. Many of the university protests have criticized Israel over the number of Palestinian civilians killed.
Republicans say that Jewish students need protection on university campuses.
“Does anyone doubt that if the Klan was on college campuses terrorizing African American students, threatening African American students, that we would see the FBI there?” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “But when it comes to antisemitism, the Democrats have a problem.”
Calls for Censure
Dr. Charles Boustany, a Lebanese American who represented Acadiana in Congress from 2005 to 2017, said he was appalled by Kennedy’s questioning.
“The fact of the matter is it was disgraceful. He displayed a high degree of ignorance. You know, I get the performative nature of it, but that was uncalled for,” said Boustany, who was defeated by Kennedy in the 2016 Senate campaign.
Boustany added about Berry: “I know her quite well and she’s a very honorable person and a very smart person. Very knowledgeable about Middle Eastern issues as well as Arab American relations and so forth, she’s a very well-informed person.”
Randal Gaines, who chairs the Louisiana Democratic Party, issued a statement condemning Kennedy’s questioning of Berry.
“It is absolutely shameful that a United States senator told a civil rights leader to ‘hide her head in a bag,’” Gaines said.
Similar Incident in the House
The ongoing war has led to tense showdowns on U.S. college campuses, with politicians wandering into the fray. So you would think lawmakers would be careful not to add more fuel to what’s already an incendiary situation, especially members of such an esteemed body as the U.S. Senate.
But not Kennedy, who felt compelled to demonstrate the need for such a hearing when he pressed Berry, an Arab American, to answer whether she supported Hamas and Hezbollah, another terrorist-connected political group.
Unfazed, Berry withstood the onslaught from Kennedy, who continued to ask whether she supported either group even after she made it clear she backed neither.
“Oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today,” Berry told the senator.
Undeterred or perhaps unable to hear over his own prattle, Kennedy pressed on and finished with his “head in a bag” comment, drawing groans from other committee members. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, then allowed Berry to respond.
“This has been regrettably a real disappointment but very much an indication of the danger to our democratic institutions that we’re in now,” she said in conclusion.
Kennedy’s boorish display will likely go over big with his more ardent constituents as well as folks on the far right who encourage such intolerance. This follows the senator’s pattern of Donald Trump-style demagoguery and playing up to the MAGA crowd, whose challenge to their leaders seems to be not “how far can you take us?” but “how low can you go?” in the contest to be the most hateful, insensitive and divisive.
During his political ascension, Kennedy actually held promise as a constitutional scholar and voice of reason and common sense. He delivered on the promise you would expect from a graduate of Vanderbilt University, Virginia School of Law and Oxford University. That held true even after he switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party in 2007.
But upon winning a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2017, Kennedy assumed a persona that’s equal parts Foghorn Leghorn, Huckleberry Hound and Jar-Jar Binks — a chimera unwittingly spawned from the Sid and Morty Krofft laboratory.
Louisiana deserves better than a mean-spirited caricature in the U.S. Senate. At the very least, Kennedy needs to be sent a message that the level of rudeness he displayed Tuesday toward Berry doesn’t sit well with the home crowd.
More importantly, Louisiana needs to have a zero-tolerance policy for the people we elected to represent us: No racism, no bigotry, no misogyny, no dogmatism, no more refusal to budge from intransigent views.
Until we do, brace yourselves for more embarrassment.
