Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee slammed a witness at a hearing on hate crimes on Tuesday for declining under questioning to condemn phrases like “long live the intifada.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, if she agreed that the goal of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is to destroy Israel.
“I think these are complicated questions,” Berry replied. “I really don’t want to talk about foreign policy.”
“There’s nothing complicated about it,” Graham said. “That’s the most ridiculous testimony ever given in this committee.”
Berry was one of three witnesses testifying at a hearing titled “A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America” organized by Judiciary chairman Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Other Republicans pressed her on whether she would condemn specific phrases and slogans used at anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7.
Berry agreed that a placard reading “there is only one solution” was an antisemitic invocation of the Holocaust, but disagreed with the idea that “long live the intifada” was a call for violence against Jews.
“I’m not sure that using the term ‘intifada,’ which literally just means to ‘shake off’ or ‘get rid of,’ is effective, as most Americans don’t actually associate it with a human rights issue,” Berry said. “‘Long live the intifada’ can mean different things.”
“‘Intifada’ also means ‘uprising’ for Palestinians,” she added.
Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and the Republican witness at Tuesday’s hearing, argued the potential ambiguity of some phrases used by anti-Israel protesters did not excuse their antisemitic intent.
“Can you imagine if there was a phrase that also meant ‘kill all the black people,’ would we be okay with projecting it, because it might also mean something else to someone else?” Goldfeder asked.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) accused Berry of supporting terrorism.
“You support Hamas, don’t you?” Kennedy asked.
“I think it’s exceptionally disappointing that you’re looking at an Arab-American witness before you and saying, ‘you support Hamas,’” Berry replied. “I do not support Hamas.”
“You should hide your head in a bag,” Kennedy told Berry at the end of his allotted time.
That response was one of several that drew jeers from protesters in the audience who booed multiple Republican senators and applauded Berry.
After the hearing, the Senate Judiciary Democrats wrote that Kennedy’s comment was “horrible.”
A spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League told JNS that while the group welcomed the judiciary committee’s focus on rising hate crimes, it was “concerned with the hearing’s political theatrics.”
“Just as it’s antisemitic to hold the Jewish community accountable for actions of the state of Israel, it’s wrong to single out an Arab American as a terrorist sympathizer,” the spokesperson said.
Speaking immediately after Kennedy, Durbin said he had “regret” for “some of the things that were said today at this hearing” without mentioning any senator by name.
Durbin also defended his record as chairman of the judiciary committee from Republicans who charged that he had not held a hearing on antisemitism since Oct. 7 and that Tuesday’s generic topic of “hate crimes” did not address the specific issue of Jew-hatred.
“This hearing is about hate,” Durbin said. “It includes antisemitism as well as hatred towards other people.”
“I would also point out that the previous chair of the committee from the other side of the table didn’t hold a single hearing on antisemitism and hate crimes,” Durbin added.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) was one of several Republicans who rejected that argument and said that the point of the hearing should have been to specifically address the rise in antisemitism in the United States.
“The message that’s being sent at this hearing today is antisemitism isn’t enough,” Hawley said. “You’ve got to add something else to it. So if you want to kill Jews, oh, well, we can’t talk about that unless we also talk about 15 other things.”
“Now we have a witness sitting here who will not condemn the attempts on these campuses that are blatantly antisemitic, Nazi tropes, to try and kill Jews,” he added.
