A congressional hearing on hate crimes raised accusations of bigotry that needed to be addressed after a Republican senator ordered the female Muslim leader of a think tank to “put her head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

John Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana, was criticized by Democrats, Muslim, Jewish and civil rights groups for his remarks directed at Maya Berry, the director of the Arab American Institute, during a hearing organized by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The proceedings were further disrupted when Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was interrupted by an audience member protesting the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza. “You’re talking about the fucking Jews and the fucking Israelis. You’re talking about the 40,000. You’re talking about all these people. Why are we talking about anti-Semitism?” the protester shouted, before being ejected from the room.

Cruz responded: “We now have a demonstration of anti-Semitism. We have a demonstration of hate.”

Republicans criticized the theme of Tuesday’s hearing, which was set by the committee’s Democratic Chairman Dick Durbin, for conflating anti-Semitism with bigotry against Muslims, Arabs and other groups.

“The goal was to have a hearing on why it’s so hard to go to school if you’re Jewish,” said Lindsey Graham, the Republican member of the committee and a senator from South Carolina. “If you’re Jewish, you get beat up. You get spit on. It’s just completely out of control. This is not the hearing we’re going to get, so we’ll work with what we have.”

A Republican-led House subcommittee has already held a series of highly charged hearings on the rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last October, which killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, prompting devastating Israeli military retaliation.

The House hearings led to the resignation of two university presidents after they failed to provide sufficiently condemnatory answers to questions about their institutions’ policies on calls for genocide against Jews.

Graham attempted to tread similar ground when he asked Berry whether she believed the goal of Hamas, the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah or Iran was to destroy the only Jewish state. Berry replied that “these are complicated questions.”

That eventually led to a hostile exchange between Berry and Kennedy, who asked her, “You support Hamas, right?”

“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” Berry responded. “But when you ask that question to the director of the Arab American Institute, you focus on the problem of hate in our country.”

When Kennedy then asked her whether she supported Hezbollah or Iran, Berry replied, “Again, I find this series of questions extremely disappointing.”

Kennedy concluded his questioning by expressing his “disappointment” at Berry’s unwillingness to openly oppose the three entities named. He stated, “You ought to put your head in a bag.”

Invited by Durbin to respond to the outburst, Berry said: “It is regrettable that as I sit here, I have experienced exactly the problem that we are trying to deal with today. This was, unfortunately, a real disappointment, but it is indicative of the danger to our democratic institutions that we now find ourselves in. And I deeply regret that.”

The Judiciary Committee – with Durbin’s approval – later endorsed Berry’s response by marking it X, with the accompanying comment: “A Republican senator told an Arab-American civil rights leader that ‘you should put your head in a bag.’ We will not amplify that horrible clip. But we WILL amplify the witness’s powerful response by addressing it.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) accused Kennedy and other Republicans of hostile treatment of Berry.

“Maya Berry went before the committee to discuss hate crimes. Both Ms. Berry and the issue should have been treated with the respect and seriousness they deserve,” said Robert McCaw, Cair’s director of government affairs. “Instead, Senator Kennedy and others chose to exemplify the bigotry that Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims have faced in recent months and years.”

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned what he called a “discriminatory and vicious attack” on Kennedy.

“It is both outrageous and inappropriate to use a hearing into the disturbing rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Semitic hate crimes to launch personal and discriminatory attacks on an expert witness they have invited to testify,” he said.

Sheila Katz, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women, called Berry’s treatment “heartbreaking.”

“(T)he only Muslim witness was asked biased questions about supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, despite her clear condemnations,” she wrote on X. “This hearing should combat hate, not perpetuate it. The Senate must do better.”