CHICAGO: John Kennedy, a US senator from Louisiana, is facing criticism for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate and name calling during a Senate hearing on the issue of hate crimes, after he accused the Muslim American head of a civil rights advocacy group of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin convened the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, titled “A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America,” in Washington on Tuesday to discuss an alarming rise in such crimes against Arabs and Muslims and other minority and religious groups.
He began by highlighting the case of Wadee Alfayoumi, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who died on Oct. 14, 2023, when he was stabbed 26 times by the landlord of the building in which his family lived in Plainfield, Illinois. His mother, Hanaan Shahin, was severely injured in the attack.
The proceedings turned ugly, however, when Sen. Kennedy, a Republican member of the committee (who is not a member of the famous Kennedy political dynasty), accused an Arab American civil rights leader who was testifying at the hearing of being a supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Maya M. Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, had read a lengthy statement in which she detailed the increase in hate crimes in the US in recent years against not only Arabs and Muslims but against Jewish Americans as well.
Citing the most recent official data, she said that in 27 states and the District of Columbia, “law enforcement agencies reported a combined 10,881 hate crimes in 2023, up from 10,171 in 2022 and 9,304 in 2021. This total includes 180 anti-Arab hate crimes, up from 104 in 2022 and 98 in 2021; and 2,073 anti-Jewish hate crimes, up from 1,311 in 2022 and 1,029 in 2021.”
Rather than commenting on the figures, Kennedy told Berry, “You should hide your head in a bag,” after accusing her of being a supporter of Hamas, an allegation Berry immediately denied.
In response to Kennedy’s shocking personal attack, she said: “Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support. 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.”
Kennedy nevertheless persisted, accusing Berry of also supporting Hezbollah and “Iran, which has a hatred of Jews.” He ignored her repeated responses that she did not support any of them.
“I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing,” she said. “I don’t support violence, whether it is Hezbollah or Hamas or any other entity that involves it. As a Muslim woman, I do not support Iran, either.”
Kennedy ignored her protestations as he continued to repeat his accusations and told Berry: “You should hide your head in a bag.”
Arab and Muslim organizations in the US condemned Kennedy for his comments, including the Muslim Civic Coalition in Washington, which said: “The congressional hearing laid bare the state of the American political system and it is ugly, paid for by special interests and paved with bias and racism.
“Every resilient community has been marginalized, often dehumanized and regularly faces hateful rhetoric from our own government officials — African American, Chinese, Indigenous, Latino, Arab, Muslim, Jewish.
“This congressional hearing on hate was a reminder that we have come far and yet we have far to go. This congressional hearing revealed that we must be resolute and, yes, we will change hate into inclusion one day.”
The hearing was not the first occasion on which Kennedy has faced criticism for comments about members of other ethnic groups, races or nationalities.
On May 17 last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (no relation), who ran as an independent candidate for US president this year before dropping out of the race in August, accused him of making racist comments, saying: “United States Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana went on an irresponsible tirade that insulted the people and government of Mexico. He stated that if not for us, Mexicans ‘would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback.’ He also suggested that the US invade Mexico to subdue the drug cartels.”
US senator condemned over comments to Arab American during Senate hearing on hate crimes
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US senator condemned over comments to Arab American during Senate hearing on hate crimes
- John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, accuses leading civil rights activist of supporting terrorist organizations and tells her to ‘hide your head in a bag’
- Maya M. Berry tells Kennedy: ‘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’
Following Kashmir attack, Modi cuts short Saudi trip after talks on energy, defense
- Saudi Arabia is one of the top exporters of petroleum to India
- Modi met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before cutting short his visit
DUBAI: Saudi Arabia and India agreed to boost cooperation in supplies of crude and liquefied petroleum gas, according to a joint statement reported by the Saudi state news agency on Wednesday following a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was cut short by a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Saudi Arabia is one of the top exporters of petroleum to India.
Modi met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before cutting short his visit and returning to New Delhi after an attack on India's Jammu and Kashmir territory which killed 26 people, the worst attack in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings.
The two countries also agreed to deepen their defense ties and improve their cooperation in defence manufacturing, along with agreements in agriculture and food security.
"The two countries welcomed the excellent cooperation between the two sides in counter-terrorism and terror financing," the joint statement said.
Denmark’s King Frederik to visit Greenland, daily Sermitsiaq reports
- The visit to Greenland by Denmark’s head of state comes as US President Donald Trump seeks a takeover
COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s King Frederik will travel to Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, on April 28, Greenlandic daily Sermitsiaq reported on Wednesday, citing the island’s own government.
The visit to Greenland by Denmark’s head of state comes as US President Donald Trump seeks a takeover by the United States of the minerals-rich and strategically important island.
Denmark has rejected Trump’s ambition and says only Greenlanders themselves can decide the territory’s future.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens Frederik-Nielsen will travel to Denmark on April 26, where he will meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, according to Sermitsiaq.
The king will travel to Greenland together with Nielsen when the prime minister returns to the island, according to the report.
Chechnya leader’s son, 17, becomes head of Chechen security council
- It is the fourth time Adam Kadyrov has been appointed to an official position since 2023, when he was 15
- He already serves as his father’s top bodyguard
The teenage son of Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechnya region and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has been appointed secretary of the region’s security council, according to the council’s Telegram channel.
Adam Kadyrov turned 17 in November 2024. It is the fourth time he has been appointed to an official position since 2023, when he was 15.
He already serves as his father’s top bodyguard, a trustee of Chechnya’s Special Forces University, and an observer in a new army battalion.
Ramzan Kadyrov has led Chechnya, a mountainous Muslim region in southern Russia that tried to break away from Moscow in wars that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, since 2007.
He enjoys wide leeway from Putin to run Chechnya as his personal fiefdom in return for ensuring the stability of the region, where an Islamist, anti-Russian insurgency continued for around a decade after the end of full-scale conflict there in the early 2000s.
His rise to power came after his own father, Akhmat, was killed in a 2004 bombing by insurgents who saw him as a turncoat.
In September 2023, Adam Kadyrov was shown, in a video posted by his father on social media, beating a detainee accused of burning the Qur'an. Ramzan Kadyrov said he was proud of his son for defending his Muslim religion.
The detainee, Nikita Zhuravel, has since been sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Russian drone strike on bus kills 9 in Ukrainian city of Marhanets, Kyiv says
- Zelensky said the Russian strike hit a bus that was transporting workers of a mining and processing plant
- “An ordinary bus. Clearly a civilian object, a civilian target,” Zelensky said
KYIV: A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring close to 50, Kyiv officials said, in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky said was a “deliberate war crime.”
Zelensky said the Russian strike hit a bus that was transporting workers of a mining and processing plant.
“An ordinary bus. Clearly a civilian object, a civilian target,” Zelensky said on X.
“It was an egregiously brutal attack – and an absolutely deliberate war crime,” he added, calling for “an immediate, full, and unconditional ceasefire.”
Russia fired a total of 134 attack drones at targets in Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Ukrainian officials arrived in London on Wednesday, even as most other big power foreign ministers pulled out, to hold talks about ways to achieve a ceasefire as a first step toward peace.
Marhanets, in south-central Ukraine, lies on the Ukrainian-controlled north bank of the Dnipro river’s dried-up reservoir that separates the warring sides.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said nine people were killed in the attack and 49 were injured.
Zelensky shared photographs of the aftermath of the attack on X, showing bodies lying in and next to the bus and being carried away by emergency workers.
Zelensky added most of the injured were women.
Elsewhere, an energy plant that provides electricity to the city of Kherson near southern front lines was destroyed in an artillery and drone attack, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Ukraine’s emergency service also reported a drone strike on the Synelnykivskyi district in the Dnipropetrovsk region that injured two people and sparked a fire at an agricultural enterprise.
Russia further fired drones into the central region of Poltava, injuring at least six people, its governor said.
A drone attack on civilian infrastructure in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa injured two people and sparked several fires, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Russian drone salvoes also set off large-scale fires in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.
Seven private houses, a storage building and an outbuilding were also damaged by drones hitting the Kyiv capital region, where a fire also broke out in a restaurant complex, its regional governor said.
Both Russia and Ukraine are under pressure from the United States to demonstrate progress toward ending the war that began with Russia’s 2022 full-blown invasion amid warnings that US President Donald Trump could walk away from peacemaking.
India warns of ‘loud and clear’ response after deadly Kashmir attack
- Gunmen kill 26 men in the popular tourist resort of Pahalgam
- Kashmir Valley shuts down in response to region’s deadliest attack in years
NEW DELHI: India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh vowed on Wednesday to pursue those who planned and carried out a deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir, where gunmen opened fire on visitors at a popular Himalayan tourist hotspot.
The attackers killed 26 people, all men, and left many critically injured at a site near the resort town of Pahalgam. It was the deadliest such incident in years, shattering the relative calm in the disputed Indian-controlled region.
“We will not only reach the perpetrators of this act but also the actors behind the scenes,” Singh said in a press briefing in New Delhi. “The responsible will soon see a loud and clear response.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to New Delhi on Wednesday morning in the aftermath of the attack, which took place as US Vice President J.D. Vance is visiting India.
The assault is seen as a setback to the peace and stability that Modi’s government has touted as a key achievement of revoking Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status in 2019.
“It is a big setback because they claimed that everything is normal in Kashmir,” Showkat Hussain, former dean of the School of Legal Studies at the Central University of Kashmir, told Arab News.
“They have been portraying to the whole world that we have managed to (cut) the resistance in Kashmir, and it seems that that mirage has dissipated because of this attack. Kashmir is as volatile as it used to be before 2019.”
The Kashmir Valley shut down on Wednesday following a call by the local ruling party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference.
Several newspapers across the region printed black front pages as a gesture of mourning, people across the valley held vigils to protest the violence, while government employees observed two minutes of silence in respect for those killed in Pahalgam.
“And a sense of insecurity has spread all across Jammu and Kashmir,” Hussain said.
The region is part of the larger Kashmiri territory, which has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Both countries claim Kashmir in full, and rule in part.
Indian-administered Kashmir has for decades witnessed outbreaks of separatist insurgency to resist control from the government in New Delhi.
According to Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, a retired officer of the Indian Air Force, the Pahalgam attack was not, however, an indication of insurgency being on the rise after decades of lull but rather that the forced scrapping of the Muslim-majority region’s constitutional autonomy has not brought what the Indian government has been referring to as “normalcy.”
It was a message by the perpetrators and “some elements on the ground in the valley,” he said, that “Kashmir is not normal, and those elements have a role. They may lie low, they may come up ... and that’s what they’ve done.”
Attacks such as the Pahalgam shooting have over decades strained ties between India and Pakistan. In 2019, a suicide bombing in Kashmir’s Pulwama district killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel and triggered cross-border air strikes, pushing the nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of war.
Pakistan’s foreign office said in a statement that it was “concerned” about the attack and extended condolences to the victims’ relatives.
