Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., repeatedly suggested a leading Arab American activist is a Hamas supporter when she testified Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes, and he told her she should hide her “head in a bag.”
The activist, Maya Berry, said repeatedly that she did not support Hamas and was “disappointed” by the minuteslong exchange toward the end of a hearing called “A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America.”
“You are the executive director of the Arab American Institute, are you not?” Kennedy said at the beginning of the exchange. She said she was and agreed with Kennedy that she is a Democratic activist.
“You support Hamas, do you not?” Kennedy asked, referring to the militant group behind the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. The question prompted gasps and surprised laughs from the audience.
“Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way,” Berry responded. Kennedy then cut her off and insisted he needed a yes-or-no answer.
Interesting, do you have any support numbers that is more recent? 6 months ago is a long time
I looked into this a bit more and two points:
Does it really matter? They supported it for at least a few months after it happened. They were happy that Hamas killed a thousand Israeli civilians and took hostages.
That being said, I mentioned it has dropped because of the consequences they faced, the latest numbers came out yesterday or the day before. It’s now down to 39% support for the attack.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-poll-finds-big-drop-support-oct-7-attack-2024-09-17/
Even the IDF disagrees with you, those numbers were faked by Hamas to make themselves look more popular than they were.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/seized-hamas-documents-show-terror-group-inflated-its-support-rates-idf-says/
The IDF can’t be trusted to tell you the sky is blue. Even if I support Israel’s right to fight I’m well aware of how they operate from a propaganda standpoint.
They even say they don’t think the Pollsters were working with Hamas, but that Hamas was somehow clandestinely changing the results anyways. Suuure they are. The group that can barely function is somehow tampering with the results of the polls without the pollster noticing.
“The IDF said the documents do not prove that PCPSR was cooperating with Hamas, but rather that the terror group was conducting clandestine actions to fraudulently influence the results of the polls.”
All the IDF says is “we found confidential documents that show they changed the numbers,” do you know how easy that would be to fake?
About as easy as it is to fake poll entries. The IDF also has a reason to want people to believe Hamas is very popular. It is a lot better of a look that all the civilians dying are super pro Hamas, than if Hamas only had a minority support.
The IDF wouldn’t have said anything when they found the documents if they benefit from it not being known.
Never heard of working both sides of a narrative? They absolutely do want most people to think Hamas has a majority support by Palestinians. If you don’t believe me, look in the mirror, and think about your own argument here. However, it won’t hurt that narrative to post this, as it is largely framed as a “can’t trust anything coming out of Palestine” narrative. The fine details of which will be lost in the fire-hose of reasons that Palestinians super support them, so it’s ok to kill them, rhetoric. Just look up how many articles out there cover this, verses how many ran with the false data.
However, I know you are completely entrenched in your ideology here, so I am gonna stop here, there will be no changing your mind.
I don’t care. They could’ve been dancing in the streets over it. It still doesn’t justify genocide.
Yes it does.
It’s why the US killed a half million middle eastern people after 9/11
It’s why people are praising Ukraine for invading Russia back
It’s why nobody cries about all the dead Nazi’s
Retaliation is very frequently justified, even when the level of killing amounts to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
It’s right there in every single history book you’ve ever read, over and over and over and over.
Which was wrong.
How is this different from what Hamas did on Oct. 7th?
The Allies did not commit genocide on the Germans during WWII. The Germans were committing a genocide, and the Allies were stopping them.