Republican Senator Sparks Outrage at Hate Crimes Hearing with Racist Questioning of Arab Leader

[Uncle Joe]

We speak with Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, after she faced racist and hostile questioning from Republicans at Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, including Senator John Kennedy, who told Berry, "You should hide your head in a bag." The experience illustrated the very problem of dehumanization the hearing was meant to address, Berry says: "That kind of bigotry and hatred is difficult to hear from anyone, but to actually experience it at a hate crime hearing from a sitting member of this institution was pretty extraordinary." We also speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who has introduced a resolution to honor 6-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb last October in an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian attack. "His horrible bigotry and hate have real consequences in the Arab community and the Palestinian community, in other communities, and it makes us all less safe," Ramirez says of Kennedy.

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

[dchill]

1. "Beyond the pale" has lost all meaning.

[murielm99]

2. Three of these

Democracy Not things on the front page is pollution.

[Gaugamela]

3. Israel is a racist right-wing authoritarian apartheid state whose sole objective is to

dominate the Middle East and you’re complaining about Democracy Now, LOL.

[moniss]

4. So his bigoted questioning was OK

with you and your objection is the program/source that carried the story of it? Or is it just a dislike of DN? Did you not feel his questioning was bigoted? Sometimes sources we don't like report a factual matter that took place.

[murielm99]

5. Nowhere did I say that.

Bye.

[Oopsie Daisy]

7. Apparently it's easier to attack someone for things they didn't say.

Do not engage. Your one-word response was the correct one.

[Gaugamela]

8. If all else fails, shoot the messenger, right?

[Uncle Joe]

9. Or do as Netanyahu's extreme, right wing racist government does and not allow access to the world's journalists

into Gaza to give testimony and witness while also killing the Palestinian journalists trying to fill the void.

Keeping journalists out and building walls eventually go hand in hand.

[moniss]

11. I didn't say you did. I asked you a question about your comment with regard to

DN because it could either be that you disagree with the article or you don't like DN for some reason. So if you don't disagree with the article then why do you dislike DN?

[Oopsie Daisy]

6. Looks like spam to me. Most reasonable people would see that it's spam.

Reasonable people can also see how much the DN! organization is anti-Democratic party and anti-Israel. It just amazes me what passes for news these days. I suspect that if anyone were making individual posts of the sentiments and messages contained therein, it would not be tolerated in many places online. It certainly seems out of place and incongruent here.

[murielm99]

10. Thank you.