Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Jan. 24, 2024. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh September 17, 2024

A protester interrupted a Senate hearing on antisemitism and other bigotry Tuesday, yelling an antisemitic epithet as Sen. Ted Cruz talked about antisemitic incidents on college campuses.

“You talk about the f**king Jews and the Israelis,” the protester yelled in a video posted on X. “Talk about the 40,000. Talk about all these people. Why is it about antisemitism?” said the unidentified protester, who was removed from the chamber. 

“We now have a demonstration of antisemitism,” retorted Cruz, a Texas Republican. “We have a demonstration of the hate.”

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Democrats and Republicans had disagreed before the Judiciary Committee hearing on whether to focus just on antisemitism, as House GOP leaders have done in a series of hearings since Oct. 7, or to broaden its scope to include harassment and violence directed at other groups. Some observers said Republicans subjected the one Muslim person to testify before the committee to an unfairly harsh line of questioning.

“Heartbreaking scene at a Senate hearing on antisemitism, anti-Arab & anti-Muslim hate,” tweeted Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women. “The only Muslim witness faced biased questions about supporting Hamas & Hezbollah despite her clear condemnations. This hearing should combat hate, not perpetuate it.”

The Senate, controlled by Democrats, gets to set the hearing’s agenda, as do Republicans in the GOP-controlled House. 

Tuesday marked the first time since Oct. 7 that the Senate Judiciary Committee had convened a hearing on the spike in hate crimes, including antisemitism.

‘It’s so hard to go to school if you’re Jewish’

At the hearing’s outset, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the committee’s ranking member, blasted Democratic chairman Dick Durbin for broadening its focus beyond antisemitism on college campuses, which has risen since Hamas invaded Gaza on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“The goal was to have a hearing about why it’s so hard to go to school if you’re Jewish,” he said. “If you’re Jewish, you’re being knocked down. You’re being spat on. It is just completely out of control. This is not the hearing we’re getting, so we’ll work with what we’ve got.” 

Of the committee’s three witnesses Tuesday, the two Durbin invited to testify support the right to anti-Israel expression on campuses.

Kenneth Stern, director of the Bard Center of the Study of Hate, and a former official at the American Jewish Committee, opposes applying the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic, when investigating allegations of discrimination against Jewish students.

Durbin’s other witness, Maya Berry, is director of the Arab American Institute, which supports a boycott of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, and has referred to the Gaza conflict as genocide.

Graham’s witness was Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. He wants government to take a tougher tack against universities that don’t root out those who threaten Jewish students, including by withholding federal funds. 

Graham submitted a letter for the record from the Orthodox Union, the nation’s largest Orthodox umbrella organization, criticizing Durbin for declining to call any victims of antisemitism at universities or on city streets to testify. 

‘A problem in America that extends beyond the Jewish population’

Durbin, of Illinois, the state with the largest Muslim and Arab populations in the nation, defended his approach.

“What we are trying to do is to identify a problem in America that extends beyond the Jewish population to the Arab population to the Palestinian population,” he said. “All of those hate crimes are unacceptable.” 

In his opening remarks, Durbin played a video highlighting the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the deadliest attack on Jews in American history, and the killing of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Muslim boy, in a hate crime. 

Wadea’s mother, a constituent of the chairman, sat in the audience. Also present was Alan Mellinger, whose 97-year-old mother, Rose, was one of the 11 congregants killed by a white supremacist during the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. 

Graham expressed outrage at Berry after he asked her whether she believed that it was the goal of Hamas, Hezbollah are Iran to destroy the only Jewish state, Israel. “I think these are complicated questions,” Berry said. 

It recalled a pivotal moment in House Judiciary hearings last year in which Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, confronted the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania about whether they consider a call for the genocide of Jews a violation of their campus codes of conduct. 

Their lawyerly answers were widely criticized. Two of the three presidents subsequently resigned.

Graham called Berry’s answer “the most ridiculous testimony ever given” in the committee. “If you think it’s complicated to figure out that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran wants to kill all the Jews, I should not listen to anything else you have got to say,” he said. 

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., returned to the topic later in the hearing: “You support Hamas, do you not?” he asked Berry.

“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” she responded. “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.”

Berry, after Graham had left the room, said she was sorry he had, because she agrees with him that foreign actors are attempting to sow division in our country. She also warned against conflating those actors with the national “organic” movement to support Palestinian human rights.

In response to another question of Graham’s early in the hearing, she had said: “There is undoubtedly a problem of antisemitism in this country. That goes without saying and the data has verified that.” The task ahead, she continued, is “what are we doing to respond to it?”

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