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 6 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 6 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 6 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 6 months ago (1 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They still support an act of mass violence against civilians, so it makes them hypocritical when they condemn the current mass violence against their own civilians.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (7 children)

No, and you’re making a helluva lot of assumptions.

Roughly 1/3 of the deaths on October 7 were of soldiers. Many of the rest were friendly fire. Israel claims that such a ratio of civilian deaths is “acceptable” in wartime. The Israeli government frequently claims that there are no civilians in Gaza, and many Palestinians say the same about Israelis. What’s galling is that Israelis have been pushing these excuses for violence for years and are outraged that they’re now being used against them.

If you can’t see the parallels then you’re hopeless. For the record, it’s unacceptable that either side is doing this.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 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 6 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 6 months ago

I looked into this a bit more and two points:

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 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 6 months ago (2 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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 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/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The IDF wouldn't have said anything when they found the documents if they benefit from it not being known.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 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 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 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 6 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 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 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 6 months ago* (last edited 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

They lost support when they saw the consequences of their choices. That still makes them terrorist sympathizers, they had to support it initially in order to abandon support.