this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (6 children)

A) Fuck this racist piece of shit.

B) Anyone who says they support Palestinians but not Hamas are intentionally being ignorant, since the vast majority of the Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas and their attack(s) on Israel based on decently reputable local polling (not sourced by Israel)

People need to take their head out of the sand and realize that this isn't just an Israeli invasion, it's a war that both sides want to keep fighting. It's just a stupid war since Palestine is significantly weaker and getting their ass handed to them. The only reason Hamas is even still able to keep fighting is they're being heavily funded with money and weapons from outside countries that want to weaken Israel. Gaza is dirt poor, they have no militarily exploitable resources or weapons production ability.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You are arguing in bad faith.

My support for Palestine means wanting Israel to stop killing Palestinian civilians. This does not indicate my support for Hamas.

You have multiple unbelievable claims that are not cited.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I am not arguing in bad faith. The fact that you think my claims are unbelievable is part of the problem, you're clearly uneducated on the situation along with the vast majority of Palestinians supporters. Here's the sources.

71% support for the Oct 7th attack as of March 2024 both in Gaza and the West bank https://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2091%20English%20press%20release%2020%20March%202024.pdf

PCPSR is the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an entirely Palestinian organization.

Support for the attack has deteriorated since then, but they were very happy with it until the real consequences started.

Only 5 percent of Palestinians think Hamas’s massacre on October 7 constitutes a war crime. https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-popular-among-palestinians/

As for the funding...

Last February, the State Department(US) said that Hamas raises funds in other Gulf countries and gets donations from Palestinians, other expatriates and its own charities. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-cash-to-crypto-global-finance-maze-israels-sights-2023-10-16/

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (9 children)

The October 7th attack was seen as a retaliation for a wave of settler attacks all summer on multiple Palestinian towns and the invasion of Al Aqsa. It doesn’t necessarily mean support for Hamas. Same way Israelis may support bombing Gaza but not necessarily supporting Netanyahu.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Everyone should take FDD with a MASSIVE grain of salt. It's a far-right neoconservative think-tank.

Edit: polling looks legit. I'll review more closely.

Edit 2: Turns out, Hamas falsified its support in polling conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Interesting, do you have any support numbers that is more recent? 6 months ago is a long time

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I looked into this a bit more and two points:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They were happy that Hamas killed a thousand Israeli civilians and took hostages.

I don't care. They could've been dancing in the streets over it. It still doesn't justify genocide.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It's why the US killed a half million middle eastern people after 9/11

Which was wrong.

It's why people are praising Ukraine for invading Russia back

How is this different from what Hamas did on Oct. 7th?

It's why nobody cries about all the dead Nazi's

The Allies did not commit genocide on the Germans during WWII. The Germans were committing a genocide, and the Allies were stopping them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

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/

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People need to take their head out of the sand and realize that this isn't just an Israeli invasion, it's a war that both sides want to keep fighting. It's just a stupid war since Palestine is significantly weaker and getting their ass handed to them.

Uh... Sorry Palestinians don't want to be occupied and ethnically cleansed from their land?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Palestinians support attacking civilians in Israel. That makes it a war.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, because Israel insists on colonizing Palestine. Zionism has always been a settler colonialist project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

How exactly do you "colonize" a region that your ancestors been on for 2000+ years?

Remember, the first massive waves of Jewish people moving to Israel literally came there from concentration camps, refugee camps, and other displaced locations because of what happened around the world wars.

Of course it was a settler project, around 6 million Jewish people were killed in the holocaust, you think they all wanted to move back in next to the neighbors that had ratted them out to the government? They got absolutely fucked, and the UN had given them their ancestral homeland back when it broke up the country that had been in that region and lost in the great war.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They're also heavily funded with money from Israel, who wants them to keep fighting. Per Netanyahu's own admission, Israel has been covertly supporting Hamas so that the PA can't gain enough power to actually make a viable Palestinian state.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

And? The point of Israel funding Hamas is that they would be able to continue attacking and thus let Israel continue disrupting the lives of Palestinians in both Gaza and West Bank, including expanding their illegal settlements. The entire point was to get excuses to keep destroying anything the PA tried to build as a government.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It only took almost a year, but reputable articles saying the willingness of Palestinians to be martyrs is wavering are finally starting to come out. There needs to be more of this because the perception of many is that the 'civilians' are actually terrorist sympathizers, or children being jeopardized by terrorist sympathizers.

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