GOP senator shouts at Muslim witness and falsely accuses her of supporting Hamas at hate crime listening to | EUROtoday

A Senate listening to on hate-related incidents was capped off on Tuesday by a male Republican lawmaker yelling at a witness and falsely accusing her of supporting terrorism.

The unusual scene performed out in entrance of the cameras at a gathering of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which met to debate rising charges of incidents motivated by antisemitic and Islamophobic hatreds across the United States, which have risen sharply for the reason that battle in Gaza started final October.

Senator John Kennedy, the committee’s top-ranking Republican, was questioning Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute when he started shouting at her that she “support[ed]” Hamas and Hezbollah.

Berry unequivocally denied each of these accusations individually, however Kennedy clearly wasn’t listening, as he repeated the Hamas accusation seconds later.

“You can’t condemn UNRWA, and you can’t condemn Hamas!” the Louisiana Republican yelled, referring to the UN-led group certain to produce support to the Palestinian territories; a report from the group instructed that a few of its staff could have had information or involvement within the October 7 assault on Israel final 12 months.

Adding to the confusion of the second: a male protester behind the room started shouting on the senator whereas he was interrogating the panel’s invited visitor, and committee chair Dick Durbin banged the gavel a number of occasions in response.

Kennedy is not any stranger to such moments and has sought to show committee hearings into spectacles earlier than. In one listening to with Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022, he utilized his query time to try to bait Garland into describing what share of US cops he thought harbored racist beliefs. He has additionally displayed an inclination in direction of private insults, and has labeled Vice President Kamala Harris a “ding-dong” and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “dumb.”

But his newest remarks come as his celebration is already underneath fireplace for ginning up conspiracies about authorized migrants from Haiti residing in Springfield, Ohio, and after a six-year-old youngster was stabbed dozens of occasions in an obvious crazed anti-Muslim assault in Illinois final 12 months.

His antics have earned him criticism earlier than; simply final 12 months he was denounced as “vulgar” and “racist” by the federal government of Mexico after he instructed that, “figuratively speaking,” the individuals of Mexico could be “eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” have been it not for US international support.

Those feedback earned him a tricky line of questioning from Fox’s Neil Cavuto, who questioned if he had gone over to the so-called “loon” wing of the Republican Party — a time period which Kennedy himself had coined.

The Louisiana senator’s tirade on Tuesday was denounced by Rashida Tlaib, the one Palestinian-American member of Congress, in addition to others on social media corresponding to journalist and Zeteo founder Medhi Hasan, who labeled Kennedy a bigot.

“The racist, Islamophobic tropes used by many Members of Congress are intended to suppress our voices and incite violence against us. It’s disgusting how many of my colleagues are silent when hate is directed like this against Arabs and Muslims,” wrote Tlaib in a publish.