EXPLOSIVE VIDEO: Ted Cruz Slams Biden Admin at Senate Hearing for Condoning Antisemitism

US CAPITOL (JNS) — Moments after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that every Republican member of the panel asked in February for a hearing on antisemitism but instead got one more than six months later “generically on hate,” antisemitic protesters interrupted the proceedings.

“This is the kind of anger and hate that is encouraged. You’re now seeing the hate manifesting right here,” Cruz said, gesturing toward the protesters, whom officers removed from the room on Tuesday morning. “We now have a demonstration of antisemitism. We have a demonstration of the hate.”

“This is the kind of anger and hate that is encouraged. You’re now seeing the hate manifesting right here. We now have a demonstration of anti-Semitism. We have a demonstration of the hate.”

— Ted Cruz after protestors interrupt and are removed from hate crimes hearing pic.twitter.com/puYYs601nm

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) September 17, 2024

Protesters could also be found outside the room, and some sought out senators in the halls of the Capitol after the hearing had concluded.

The hearing was the first ostensibly about Jew-hatred at the Senate since Oct. 7, after the House held some 10 hearings on the topic. One of the latter, which centered on Jew-hatred on campus, centered on the testimony of three university presidents, two of whom have since resigned.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, opted for a hearing about hate crimes broadly, and not just antisemitism.

Mark Goldfeder, an attorney, Orthodox rabbi and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS after his testimony during the hearing that he “was told that there was some confusion as to what the hearing was going to be about.”

“What we tried to do was explain that antisemitic hate crimes are often a canary in the coal mine of intolerance—that what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews, that antisemitism is a threat to democracy everywhere,” he told JNS. “All communities need to show support.”

The hearing’s “all lives matter” approach, which critics said addressed Jew-hatred only as part of a broader story and not a sufficient concern in its own right, left some expecting a significant focus on hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs.

The activist group Code Pink, which frequently protests in the Capitol and which supports boycotting the Jewish state, had a visible presence both in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and in the halls of the Capitol, where its co-founder Medea Benjamin and others accosted senators as they entered the room.

Prior to the beginning of the hearing, which ran late, a man whose attire identified him with Code Pink, yelled that Durbin was 20 minutes late, because “the Jewish lobby had him on the phone, and told him he can’t talk about anything but antisemitism.”

“He was trying to figure out what to do,” the anti-Israel protester claimed, of the senator.

When Medea and others found Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in the halls and accused him of being beholden to the Jewish state, the senator called Code Pink the “China-funded people,” as reporting in the New York Times and elsewhere has noted that one of the group’s large benefactors, who has close ties to Chinese, is married to a Code Pink co-founder.

“Who funds you?” Benjamin asked Hawley. “AIPAC. The pro-Israel lobby.”

“There you go again with the antisemitism,” Hawley responded. Before he entered a members-only elevator, the senator said it was an honor to be protested by Code Pink, which is made up of “supporters of the Holocaust.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accused those who accosted him in a hallway of having “blood on your hands.”

‘It could, ironically, help us’

Goldfeder told JNS that despite the drama at the hearing, the committee members were attentive to his concerns.

“All of them really displayed a degree of care and concern about vulnerable communities that are being targeted,” he said. “I was especially appreciative of senators, who focus on the fact that while all hate crimes are important, there really is an acute problem right now, and this is a matter of triage for the Jewish community.”

Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, wrote to Durbin and to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the committee’s top Republican, ahead of the hearing. In the letter, he said he is disappointed that the committee didn’t call students and educators, who are at the front lines of rising Jew-hatred on campus, as witnesses and that the hearing shifted from being about Jew-hatred to broader hate.

“Now that the Judiciary Committee is having this hearing, the majority seems determined to reinforce the message to American Jews that antisemitism is, in their view, a second-class civil rights issue,” Diament wrote.

“Chairman Durbin hasn’t called any of the many victims of the wave of hate on university campuses or city streets to testify, nor has he called a leader of a mainstream American Jewish organization,” he added. “Moreover, as far as the committee’s majority is concerned, the biggest surge of antisemitism in this country’s history can’t be the sole topic of the hearing. Maybe ‘better late than never’ just doesn’t apply to this situation.”

Diament told JNS that he attended meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday but was not at the committee hearing.

The OU official thinks that the controversy about the hearing could help push forward several pieces of House-passed legislation that address rising Jew-hatred, including the Anitisemitism Awareness Act and bills that would strip tax benefits from nonprofits that support terror and would demand greater clarity about foreign funding of educational institutions.

“I had a couple of hallway conversations with some Democratic senators, who were not at the hearing but were surprised to hear how the hearing was set up,” Diament told JNS.

“It could, ironically, help us get the legislation across the finish line,” he said. “This hearing was not received well.”