(Free Beacon) An Arab-American activist invited by Senate Democrats to testify at an anti-Semitism hearing on Tuesday defended calls for “intifada” and praise for Hamas “martyrs” on college campuses, telling lawmakers these chants are “not hate speech.”
Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, said such calls were ambiguous and could “mean different [things].”
“I don’t think it’s automatically hate speech,” she said. “The problem is that there’s nuance, I’m trying to introduce to this conversation.”
Berry was one of two witnesses invited by the Democratic leadership on the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at the hearing on “Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America.” She described the anti-Israel protests as a “national organic student movement” that has “come together to support Palestinian human rights.”
