Following historic US hearing on anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate crimes, advocates urge focus on victims

Following a US congressional hearing this week, whose focus became the accusatory and extremist line of questioning of an Arab American rights advocate by a US senator, the witness in the hearing is urging the public to focus on the Palestinian-American boy whose who was fatally stabbed last year because of his background, as well as other victims of hate crimes.

On Wednesday, the day after giving testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee, in which she was repeatedly asked by Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana if she supported entities the US deems as "terrorist threats", Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, issued a statement asking people focus on the purpose of the hearing: ending the rise in hate crime.

During the hearing, Kennedy asked Berry if she supported Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and also told he that she should hide her head in a bag. She said that she was disappointed in his line of questioning.

In her statement, she said that "just behind me, sitting quietly, was Wadea al-Fayoume's mother, whose six-year-old son was brutally murdered in a hate crime last October for being a Palestinian child. She came to that event not for politics or headlines, but to help find real solutions to the very hate that took her child’s life. Instead, she had to sit there and endure hateful rhetoric all over again while our elected officials continued to devalue Palestinian lives." 

She continued, "Instead of centring the ways we can work together to stem hate, including antisemitism, some members of the Committee chose to dig into complicated foreign policy to centre the state of Israel, brandish images deprived of context at witnesses, and accuse me—the only Arab American, only American Muslim, and only woman testifying—of supporting violence.".

She went on to emphasise the irony of facing what many saw as racist questioning while trying to explain the extent of hate crime in the US. She noted that from 2015 to 2022, the country has seen a 99 percent increase in reported hate crime. More recent reports have shown a sharp increase in hate crime and overall bias incidents following the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, followed by nearly a year of daily airstrikes by Israel on Gaza.

"The historic levels of hate crimes we are experiencing harm individuals, communities, and our country—we can and must respond more effectively," Berry said. "And as I said at the hearing, policymakers should not be fuelling it with dangerous rhetoric—I just wasn't expecting to see more of it at the actual hate crime hearing."