Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued Tuesday against “prioritizing” anti-Jewish hate crimes, even if there are more of them and even in the wake of a sharp rise in antisemitism over the past year.
Durbin spoke at the opening of a hearing on “hate crimes,” which is the Democrat-run Senate’s first attempt to address the wave of antisemitic rhetoric and attacks since the October 7, 2023 terror attack in Israel a year ago.
The Republican-run House of Representatives has held several hearings on the topic, but the Senate — run by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who calls himself the highest-ranking Jew in government, has not.
As Breitbart News reported Monday, Democrats invited two witnesses to the hearing who oppose the efforts of the Jewish community to deal with antisemitism. Republicans invited a witness who has focused on antisemitism.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the ranking minority party member on the committee, used his opening remarks to point out that Republicans had written to Durbin in May, asking for a hearing focused specifically on antisemitism.
Graham pointed out that Jews, while a tiny minority of Americans, were the victims of two-thirds of the reported religously-based hate crimes. He noted the emergence of extremist, genocidal anti-Israel language on campuses.
He added that the House had already had ten hearings specifically about antisemitism, and the Senate had held none.
Durbin replied:
Senator Graham, you and I agree on more than we disagree. And we certainly agree that hate crimes should be treated seriously, whatever their origin or purpose. They are unacceptable in this nation of ours. Prioritizing which group is being discriminated against the worst, I don’t believe is a valid exercise of our authority here. What we are trying to do is trying to identify the problem in America that extends beyond the Jewish population to the Arab population, the Palestinian population — all of those hate crimes are unacceptable.
Durbin later expressed skepticism about efforts to say that one kind of hate crime — antisemitism — was the worst, this is the priority, to the exclusion of the others, we’re only going to deal with one.”
Earlier, Durbin had used his opening statement to attack former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) over their comments on Haitian migrants, and to focus on white supremacists as the major threat to America.
Update: Later, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) added that members of the committee had asked for a hearing on antisemitism since February, and had been denied. As he said that, some members of the audience heckled him and were removed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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